


The High Way to Hell (Infinity on High)

by acareeroutofrobbingbanks



Series: The High Way to Hell [6]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Character Death, Demons, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Gore, Hunters, M/M, Sexual Content, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:29:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 221,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all."</p>
<p>Fall Out Boy was never an ordinary band, never made of ordinary humans. Not, in fact, made of humans at all. Andy Hurley is a half-vampire that retains his morals by only drinking from the willing. Joe Trohman is a werewolf and the most powerful pack leader in the world. Pete Wentz is an incredibly powerful fae with the power of charmspeak. And Patrick is still just Patrick.</p>
<p>But after a hugely successful sophomore album and their defeat of a prince of hell (better known for his rock band: The Killers) Fall Out Boy is attracting a lot of attention, human and magical, and someone very powerful has their eyes on the band. They have to focus all their attention on staying alive and protecting the lives of the innocent. And, of course, on not falling in love with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Number of the Beast

              As much as Patrick cared about Pete, he was getting smothered. Actually, all of his friends were smothering him a little bit.

              To a degree, perhaps Patrick needed it. He knew he wasn’t exactly handling his Chicago breakup well. He would go so far as to say he was handling it badly. Very badly.

              The first few weeks after Chicago left featured Patrick single handedly pushing the local liquor store to new financial success and buying a new copy of Ghostbusters because he played the DVD so much that it stopped working.

              Maybe he let himself become a bit of a wreck. But Patrick had had every intention of pulling himself back together in time to record the new album. For better or worse, after two weeks radio silence, Pete all but broke down his door and said they were going to LA.

              “We’re not recording yet!” Patrick had whined, Pete hadn’t listened for even a moment. Instead, he informed Patrick that he had bought a house in California, and they were getting the fuck out of Chicago right that moment. They screamed at each other for a while, but in the end, as he always did, Pete won. By the end of the day, a bewildered Patrick was sitting on a westbound plane with Pete chattering happily in his ear.

              “Two stories, built in bar, absolutely made for having houseguests, this awesome fucking pool, and Hemmy loves it, obviously, that was the most important part.”

              “Not as many squirrels to chase in California,” Patrick said absently.

              “Oh, you’d be surprised,” Pete laughed.

              Patrick could tell that his good mood was at least partially a put-on, but after his initial anger, he was grateful for it. Getting out of Chicago was good for him, though he wasn’t inclined to admit anything of the sort aloud. And more than that, Pete’s house was big and luxurious enough that the two of them never even needed to see each other, and in fact probably never would have, if the person Patrick was staying with had been anyone other than Pete.

              Staying in wasn’t as bad as going out, but Pete could never fucking sit through an entire movie in silence, and it was kind of grating. Patrick would be trying to watch _Return of the Jedi_ on the opposite side of the house from Pete’s room, and Pete would show up ten minutes in with a bowl of popcorn and a “Dude, Empire Strikes Back is so much better.”

              “If you like it better, feel free to watch it,” Patrick said.

              “Really? Thanks,” Pete shot Patrick a grin and switched out the movies.

              But in comparison, dealing with Pete in his house was far worse than going out. Pete could spend long periods of time not interacting with anyone at all and barely tolerating his band, but he seemed to have picked up Patrick’s charity case on an upswing. As it turned out, this meant that he thought the best thing for Patrick would be to drag him to events and parties all over Beverly Hills. All the blinding camera lights did was make Patrick more upset. In the end, eventually Pete must have noticed, because they stopped going out. Still, for someone who could read auras, Pete was remarkably non-perceptive.

              Even once the two of them came to an agreement they could both live with, in regards to spending time together, Patrick still wanted to be alone above all else.

              He didn’t know how to explain it to Pete either. He wanted to go off and be by himself. He wanted to wallow and whine and kick up a goddamn tantrum where no one could see him and judge him. But as long as he had Pete breathing down his neck, all he could do was smile tightly and keep repeating that he was fine while Pete kept giving him concerned looks because he was lying, but _what the hell was he supposed to say?_ Sure, he’d helped Pete through his fair share of breakups, letting Pete sob and rant and rave, but that wasn’t who Patrick was. He had a sneaking suspicion that Pete was waiting for Patrick to break down to him, but that just wasn’t how it worked. If he was going to fall apart, he was going to do it alone, and he was going to pull himself together alone.

              It felt far too fucking pathetic to bawl his eyes out over a goddamn city breaking his heart.

              If he thought going back into the studio and having work to focus on could make it any better, he was wrong on that account too. Joe and his stupid, no-regards-for-privacy pack bond kept giving Patrick sad, worried looks and treated him with kid gloves. It was insulting, actually. Andy wasn’t as bad. He seemed to be the only person that got the memo that what they were _supposed_ to do was act like everything was normal.

              On top of all of that, none of his clothes fit right anymore. While pizza might have been the cure to all of Pete’s problems, it wasn’t doing any good for Patrick’s overall self-esteem.

              With an ever expanding laundry list of problems, Patrick was already in a bad mood when they were informed of the jackal problem.

              KTC had waltzed into the studio when Patrick was trying to get down the guitar for a song with a half-frantic, half-eager look on his face that gave Patrick the now familiar sinking feeling in his stomach that they were about to deal with some new supernatural bullshit.

              The rest of his band seemed to get the same feeling, as they all sat up a bit straighter, Pete looking eager, Andy intrigued, and Joe very solemn. Since the incident with the Killers, Joe had started taking all of monster-fighting a lot more seriously, holding his shoulders straighter and acting like, well, like a leader should.

              KTC beckoned through the glass for Patrick to come out of the recording room, and he did, with a heavy sigh, hanging his headphones up carefully and walking out into the waiting room.

              “Ready for this?” he asked, and Patrick raised one eyebrow.

              “Jackals,” he said, like the word should have some major impact on the band. As usual, no one but Pete looked particularly affected by the news.

              “What, like in _The Omen_?” Patrick asked. He looked around, hoping the question wasn’t stupid, but Andy and Joe looked just as confused. Pete let out a long, low whistle.

              “Jackals plural?” Pete asked, blinking rapidly. He leaned over and put a hand on KTC’s shoulder, always touching everyone. “How many? Is it a pack?”

              “A big one,” KTC agreed, nodding. “They seem to be living near Death Valley, mostly taking out campers right now, but they’ve been moving further and further south, and if they hit a town-”

              “Disaster,” Pete said, wide eyed.

              “Are you guys going to explain, or do you just really want someone to ask?” Patrick sighed, rolling his eyes.

              “Sorry?” Pete said.

              “It’s just you two,” Joe said.

              “Jackals,” Pete said, looking shocked that no one seemed to understand. “Vicious, monstrous, evil dog-like creatures that feast on human flesh. They rip people to to shreds like piranha. And that’s if you’re lucky. They say that the bites are cursed, and that they can drag you straight to hell if they’re so inclined. But, then again, the whole insatiable hunger for human flesh is usually bad enough.”

              “Jackals are small hyena-like creatures that don’t even exist in this hemisphere,” Andy said. “Like, they’re real, you know that, right? They’re scavengers, and they live in Africa. They’re not evil, that’s just superstition.”

              “Not that kind of jackal,” Korean Tom Cruise said. “I mean, jackals are real, both kinds. We don’t have a separate name for them, but the mundane jackals and demonic jackals are as different as humans and vampires.”

              Andy gave their manager a long suffering look, and KTC cringed.

              “Well, I’ve never heard of a good jackal before,” he said, looking sheepish.

              “So it looks like a jackal, but it’s a murderous demon,” Joe said, and leaned back with a sigh. “Well that sounds unpleasant.”

              “Jackals pose a serious threat when in packs. I haven’t seen that many in one place in a decade, because they do typically hunt alone. Alone, they’re bad, but in packs…”

              “What on earth were you doing with all this information before you could just dispatch us on missions whenever you felt like it?” Patrick asked sourly.

              “You have all day tomorrow off,” KTC said rather than answering. “If you start driving as soon as the studio closes you could be back by morning.”

              “We’ve got it,” Joe said, his jaw set. Patrick successfully didn’t roll his eyes. It was difficult, what with Joe acting all Commander-In-Chief and taking himself so seriously.

              Then again, even if Patrick was angry with the whole world and everyone in it, the idea of fighting something off for the greater good wasn’t too bad. He might save someone, and at least he could take out all this anger on something that deserved it.

              The impending threat of something that could rip Patrick to shreds was enough to distract him, and they didn’t manage to be productive for the rest of the working day. Patrick attempted to focus, but he couldn’t think about music properly. Meanwhile, Joe was going over their stockpile of weapons and making sure everyone was set. Patrick had tried other weapons, but even though his knives were only close-range weapons, he was a big fan of them. They hadn’t failed him yet. Outside, Andy was debating the pros and cons of using swords, and Pete was considering getting any weapon. At all.

              “Seriously, you’re the worst fighter ever. The least you could do is like, get a Captain America shield. Or something,” Patrick rolled his eyes. Pete looked a little hurt.

              “Hey, the charmspeak helps!” he argued.

              “Not saying it doesn’t, but come on, don’t you want some kind of weapon? Anything?” Patrick asked.

              “Think of like, superhero weapons,” Joe suggested. “Thor’s got a hammer. Batman has fucking batarangs. Lara Croft has handguns.”

              Pete was shaking his head.

              “No, none of that sounds right, like me. I just don’t think I’m much of a fighter.” Andy gave him a pained look, and Pete amended, “When it comes to the supernatural.”

              “The Power Rangers staff things?” Patrick jumped in. “The crowbar from Silent Hill? Indiana Jones’ whip?”

              Pete’s eyes lit up, and Patrick grimaced.

              “No, I didn’t mean literally, you can’t just get Indiana Jones’ whip-”

              “I want a bullwhip!” Pete half-screamed, kissing Patrick sloppily on both cheeks. “Brilliant, you’re brilliant! Where can I get one?”

              “I do not trust you with a whip,” Patrick said loudly.

              “Well, we’re in a hurry today,” Joe said quickly, “Let’s worry about that later. Ready to go?”

              “As I’ll ever be,” Patrick said resignedly, and Joe shot him a worried look. Patrick ground his teeth together, making an effort not to react. Joe was just trying to be helpful, just trying to be helpful. Patrick wasn’t going to do something stupid like punch a werewolf in the face over a point of pride.

              The drive up to Death Valley was more easygoing than anything Patrick had done in a while. They had managed to ditch security, though Dirty caught up with them at the last moment. Pete was still making an effort to keep him away from magic, but it was difficult when Dirty was fighting so avidly against it. The five of them could just drive for hours, listening to loud music and feeling normal again.

              The radio blared and they rolled the windows all the way down in spite of Pete’s protests. This caused Patrick to roar with laughter when they got out to refill the tank and saw Pete’s hair in all of its messy, windblown glory. Patrick sharpened his knives (in retrospect, a bad idea in a moving car) and glared at Dirty every time one of his hands got too close. The miles rolled by too fast.

              By the time they actually reached Death Valley National Park, the sun had sunk below the horizon, but an eerie light still emitted from behind the rugged desert. It was too soft and quiet and far too cold for California, a breezeless, insidious cold that raised the hairs on Patrick’s arms.

              “So, do jackals make some kind of mating call we’re supposed to emulate?” Andy asked. Pete gave him a confused look, and Andy shrugged, looking slightly superior.

              “I mean, this park is fucking enormous. Like, thousands of miles. How do you intend to scour the entire desert in search of small dogs that blend in with the sand, _at night_?” Andy asked.

              “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Pete said, and pointed off into the distant hills. “We just have to go set up camp and wait.”

              “Wait for the vampire dogs? And they’ll show up, just like that?” Dirty asked.

              “Jackals,” Pete sighed, “but yes. I mean, if you or Patrick wants to spill a little blood, that might speed up the process- or not,” he said quickly, catching the murderous look on Andy’s face.

              “Ugh, camping,” Patrick wrinkled his nose. “I remember there being a lot of bugs and ghost warriors last time.”

              “I’ve always wanted to go camping in the desert,” Joe said lightly. He kicked the car doors shut and locked them, “All the cool pictures of the night sky are taken out here, right? It could be fun.”

              Patrick merely shot Dirty a sympathetic look, one that he hoped conveyed: “They’re always like this.” However, Dirty didn’t seem to need it, looking more eager than Pete. He certainly didn’t need Patrick’s help.

              The five of them hiked over the crest of a long, low hill, a feat that looked easier than it was, given how hard it was to get footholds in the sand. Patrick kept slipping, and the only one who managed the task with perfect ease was Andy.

              “What do your elf-eyes see, Legolas?” Dirty called up to him when Andy was at the top of the hill and the rest of them were nearing the halfway point. Andy flipped him off, and though Patrick couldn’t see that far off, he was certain that he was rolling his eyes as well.

              After crossing two of the large hills, Joe declared that they should stop for the night, in what he called a “close distance” from the car, even though it had taken the better part of an hour to get there. The sky was a clear, almost liquid black by then, and the stars glittered so brightly all across it that they were nearly as bright as city lights. There was simply so much to the sky, and looking down at anything on the ground seemed to be a poor imitation of the night sky’s clarity and beauty.

              Since Joe hadn’t actually come up with this plan until they were on the road, none of them had any camping supplies to speak of, no tents or sleeping bags. Now that the sun had completely set, it was uncomfortably cold for Patrick, and presumably for Pete and Dirty too.

              “We should tell scary stories or some shit, man,” Dirty laughed. Patrick raised an eyebrow at him, though he knew it would go unseen in the relative darkness.

              “I think we’re in one, actually.”

              “Shame we don’t have anything to make a fire with,” Joe sighed, “That would definitely bring them in faster.”

              “I have bad news for you about the desert,” Andy laughed.

              “But I have good news for you about catering to rock stars and all their various bad habits,” Dirty said with a slight smirk. He pulled a thin metal rectangle out of his pocket and flicked it open with his thumb, a small flame popping to life and illuminating his almost manic grin.

              “I’m guessing we still don’t have kindling,” Patrick said dryly. Pete frowned and dug around in the miniscule bag he had slung over his shoulders. There was a great deal of rummaging, and he eventually produced a snack sized bag of Doritos with a hopeful look on his face.

              “Think this’ll help?” he asked. “I heard once that chips are pretty flammable, right?”

              Patrick wished he was shocked. Within minutes, there was a very small fire burning on the ground, illuminating their faces and giving off enough heat to maybe toast a marshmallow.

              Patrick drew his limbs closer to his chest. It was too quiet outside, with no trees for the wind to blow through, and with chips too smooth to make the fire crackle, it was dead silent.

              After the last of the chips had finally dimmed to nothing but an ember, Dirty spoke up.

              “Is monster fighting usually this… boring?” he asked. No sooner had the words left his mouth than a cry pierced the night, a sound halfway between a howl and a door squeaking open. Patrick froze, trying to determine which direction the sound had come from, when yet another cry broke through the night air, then another, and another, until the whole desert was ringing with the sounds of the jackals’ calls.

              Patrick swore as he jumped to his feet, pulling out his cell phone with one hand and a knife with the other, sliding the phone open in the hopes that the dim screen could help illuminate the scene around him. He could see Pete, Dirty, and Joe pulling out phones too, and Andy putting himself in a fighting stance. _Vampires._

              “They managed to surround us,” Joe said, his tone flat and sharp. Patrick could see his fist clench tightly around his gun in the pale light, and Joe made a face.

              “Someday I’m really gonna have to trade this out for a six-shooter,” he muttered. His face was ice white as he stared down at the land surrounding the small hillock they stood on. Andy’s fangs were bared, and the two of them were making Patrick painfully nervous.

              “How many?” he asked, breathing shallow.

              “Ten,” Joe said.

              “Twelve; two more are on their way,” Andy said, and Joe’s face twitched in annoyance.

              “Are we going to fight them, or run?” Andy asked Joe. Joe thrust his shoulders back as he surveyed the animals again, the jackals Patrick still couldn’t see, that were screaming their horrible, creaking cries.

              “Let’s fight, but start moving in a general towards-the-car direction,” Joe said, and fired one bullet that hit its mark, based on the pitiful scream that came from that direction. He then tossed the empty gun to Dirty and hurled himself down the hill. Mid-jump, his shape changed from human to wolf, dark fur blending the lithe creature into the night. The wolf let out one low howl as its paws skidded into the sand, sprinting the rest of the way down with a fearsome sort of grace, fangs bared and gleaming in the moonlight. Andy followed after, his fangs bright and more terrifying than usual against the black night, looking, when he snarled, like a proper vampire.

              Patrick ran after them, half stumbling down the hill that his friends had sprung down so gracefully, only to freeze when he saw the creatures they were supposed to be killing. They were, above all else, cute.

              The size and build of small dogs, the jackals looked almost happy. Patrick looked right at one, knee high and bounding towards him with its tongue sticking out. Patrick knew that it was supposed to be evil, the vampire of dogs, but he couldn’t see fangs or bad intentions. He hesitated as the creature leapt onto him, his knife arm hanging limp at his side.

              The jackal landed on Patrick’s chest, shoving him to the ground with more force than seemed available in such a tiny body. As soon as it was face to face with Patrick, it bared its long rows of sharp teeth. The panic Patrick should have felt all kicked in at once as he threw it off of him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the jackals were converging on him, all hackles raised and ripping growls. He dropped his phone and pulled out his second knife, and began slashing wildly as they jumped on him.

              It was all Patrick could do to try and keep slashing with the long knives he had in his hands, hoping to keep some of them back as he tried to get to his feet. He could feel thick, blade-sharp claws ripping at his clothes and skin, a flurry of fur around him keeping him down.

              Just like piranha, like Pete had said, it seemed every time Patrick managed to land a good blow with his knife and take one out, another replaced it. He jabbed a knife down hard whenever he saw a mass of fur, and tried to ignore the painful sensation of claws raking across his skin; trying to fight off the urge to brush away all the sticky blood running down his arms as he used them to shield his face.

              The fight seemed to be slowing as the number of jackals thinned, and, having stood up during, Patrick collapsed back into a sitting position on the sand. No sooner had he fallen to the ground than he felt a horrible clamping sensation on his upper arm, and he let out a shocked yell as he shook his arm violently to try and force the thing off. He recovered his wits enough to stab it in the stomach as it hung from his arm, and with an awful, squelching whine, it collapsed to the ground in a heap.

              “Fuck!” Andy was at Patrick’s side in an instant, pulling cloth way too tightly around the wound on his right arm and breathing through his mouth. His teeth were gritted, with bits of fur and muscle stuck between them. Patrick hissed as he tried to tie the cloth off.

              “Jesus Christ, I’m not gonna lose the arm, can you give me some circulation?” Patrick gasped.

              “Sorry,” Andy said, loosening the cloth slightly. Patrick looked down at it, catching the faintest glint of silver writing on the black t-shirt.

              “I guess Joe’s going shirtless,” Patrick attempted to force out a weak laugh, but it came out a little hysterical. He was still shaking and covered in scratches, and given the look on Andy’s face, he must have looked nearly as bad as he felt.

              “Ugh, I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner, they were all over Dirty and he couldn’t fight so we had to make sure they weren’t going to go after him again-”

              “I’m fine, really,” Patrick lied, and gulped when he looked down at the scattered jackal corpses all over the ground, bleeding out of stab wounds. “I just think I’m gonna try vegetarianism again, that’s all.”

              “Son of a bitch,” Joe said in a voice that was almost cheerful, walking towards them as a human again, “I think you took out half of them on your own.” His bare chest was spattered with blood, but none of it seemed to be his own.

              Patrick nodded weakly. “Ha, it felt like more,” he said, again attempting a weak laugh. He tried harder to make it look sincere when he saw Pete’s concerned face.

              “Well, let’s head back and tell KTC we’ve taken care of this whole jackal problem,” Joe said. “And maybe stop at a Taco Bell or something along the way, since we used dinner for kindling.”

              The five of them made the long trek back to the car in the dark, and Patrick’s arm throbbed underneath the Metallica t-shirt the whole way there.

              By the time Patrick got home- or, to Pete’s house, where he currently lived- Pete had already made them stop at a Walgreens and buy a fantastically overestimated amount of bandages, hydrogen peroxide, and Neosporin, in spite of Patrick’s arguments that this bite wound was definitely too big to cover in Neosporin from those tiny bottles. He somehow managed to stop Pete from applying the bandages for Patrick, and got into the bathroom alone around the time the sun was rising.

              He winced as he uncovered the wound. It was bad, as he knew it would be, but what he had not expected was how fresh it looked. The t-shirt was completely soaked through with blood, enough to be wrung out in the bathtub, and the deep holes left in his skin from the teeth of the jackal hadn’t even started to scab over. Still, Patrick kept his arm elevated, poured hydrogen peroxide over it, didn’t scream as it fizzed and stung, and wrapped his whole arm up as tightly and quickly as he could. Relieved that the whole ordeal was over, Patrick caught sight of himself in the mirror. Seeing all the other slightly bleeding scrapes and cuts all over his body, he took a deep breath and got to work cleaning again.

              By the time Patrick woke up the next morning (at two AM, because the jackals had thrown his sleep schedule completely out of whack, no matter how hard he and Pete had tried to stay up watching _Sex and the City_ , at Pete’s strange insistence) he noticed that his bandages were slowly turning red on the outside.

              “Morning, sunshine,” Pete called from the kitchen. Patrick walked in to see Pete cooking pancakes and humming to himself. “You want yours with chocolate chips or blueberries?”

              “Um, just plain,” Patrick said distractedly. He could feel a slow trickle of blood running down his arm. “I’ll, um, be right back,” he said, and ran to the bathroom.

              Even though the bite really hadn’t felt that deep, the blood had shown no signs of slowing since Patrick had last bandaged it, and he felt just the slightest bit concerned. He still had to do all the bandaging really quickly to prevent from bleeding all over Pete’s bathroom floor. At least all the scrapes from the claws were beginning to scab over.

              Returning to the kitchen, Patrick saw two enormous stacks of pancakes, all a little thinner and darker than he was used to, but still steaming and surprisingly tasty.

              “Didn’t know you could cook,” Patrick said through a mouthful of pancake fluff and maple syrup.

              “Just because pizza is better than all meals doesn’t mean I can’t make other stuff,” Pete replied thickly. There was chocolate stuck to his teeth, and it was surprisingly endearing.

              Patrick had to change his bandages again as soon as they got back from the studio, even with him doubling up on them right before they left. The last thing he wanted was to make Andy thirsty when they were just trying to record.

              At first, he assumed it was nothing to worry about. The first few days were fine, easy to ignore. It was nice to soak up the praise for fighting off so many of the jackals all by himself. Aside from the heavily bleeding wound, things were going really well. Recording was going smoothly, for once, and no one appeared to be in mortal danger. KTC was calling old contacts to dig for other missions, now that someone was willing to take them again. And Patrick wasn’t being treated quite so breakable anymore.

              Perhaps it was the fact that he finally wasn’t being treated like fine china that he couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone that the bleeding hadn’t slowed after a week. After all, he kept telling himself, it had to stop bleeding eventually, right?

              “Are you feeling okay?” Andy asked one day. Patrick kept drifting off, but he shook his head to clear it and gave Andy a tired smile.

              “Why do you ask?” he asked.

              “You’re kind of pale. Um, paler than usual,” Andy added, his mouth twisting slightly. Patrick rolled his eyes.

              “Thanks,” he said, “The vampire calls me pale. That’s awesome.”

              “I mean, seriously,” Andy said, looking Patrick up and down. “You sure you’re okay?”

              Rather than answer and risk getting caught in a lie by Pete, Patrick just gave Andy a confident grin and stepped into the booth, sucking in a deep breath and trying to find space in his chest to belt out the notes for as long as he had to.

              KTC entered at some point in time, talking excitedly to the band, though Patrick couldn’t hear what they were saying through the glass. He was just slipping off his headphones, ready to ask how it sounded, when a sudden and intense wave of vertigo overcame him, and he was only distantly aware of falling over, his vision fading to black.

***

              Andy hadn’t even been paying attention when Patrick passed out. KTC was talking to them, nervous and confused. Nervous because apparently, a pack of jackals was decimating small towns on their path towards LA.

              “That’s impossible,” Andy said flatly. “We killed all of them. Trust me,” he said darkly. He hated fighting the jackals, numerous and fast and vicious.

              “Well, apparently not all of them,” KTC said. “As there’s still a pretty big pack of them attacking people.”

              Andy heard a quiet, muted thud come from the inside of the studio, and would have ignored it if Pete hadn’t yelled Patrick’s name and wrenched the two noise proof doors open. Patrick lay on the floor, looking like he could have been sleeping if he weren’t sprawled in such an uncomfortable position. Also, if he hadn’t smelled so painfully strongly of blood.

              Pete leaned at the right of Patrick worriedly as Patrick’s eyes began fluttering.

              “Wha-?” he asked, his voice slurred as though drunk. Andy frowned.

              “What’s wrong?” Pete asked harshly, eyes narrowed. Patrick laughed nervously.

              “Um, must be more tired than I thought,” he said, fully knowing that the lie wouldn’t pass.

              “You’re bleeding all over the floor,” Andy said, nodding to the red splotches on the floor where Patrick’s oversaturated bandage had rubbed against it. Patrick swore, cupping his hand around the bandages.

              “Haven’t changed them recently enough, I guess,” he muttered. Andy sniffed delicately and frowned. His blood smelled weaker than usual, like there wasn’t enough of it.

              “You got bit a week ago,” Dirty said. “Has it not healed since then?”

              Patrick grimaced. “Not noticeably.”

              “Christ,” Pete groaned, and before Andy could stop him, Joe ripped off the bandages, revealing a large bite wound that looked deep and brand new. The scent was overwhelming, and Andy braced himself on the wall and started breathing out of his mouth.

              “I had really hoped that cursed bites were just a myth,” Pete said, nearly as pale as Patrick. Patrick rolled his eyes, clearly not understanding the severity of the situation, or at least trying to downplay it.

              “It’s not cursed,” Patrick protested, “It’s just… not healing… yet.”

              “Fuck!” Pete yelled. Since they appeared to be done inspecting it, Andy bandaged up the wound again, wishing he had a clean bandage for it.

              “Got any old magic books on this?”

              “No, but I can ask Ryan if he knows anything,” Pete said, lips pursed.

              Andy pursed his lips and looked at Patrick again. “You probably should’ve mentioned this earlier.”

              “Maybe if we can find out where the jackals originated-” Joe began, only to be interrupted by KTC clearing his throat.

              “Why don’t you just take him to a doctor?” he asked. Everyone in the room, even Dirty, gave him a disbelieving look.

              “I don’t think my insurance covers bites from mythical creatures, actually,” Patrick said.

              “Well, obviously no human doctor would,” KTC laughed, and then stared as none of them showed any sudden comprehension. Andy raised one eyebrow.

              “You want us to take him to, what, a vampire doctor?” Pete asked, “His blood smells like the vampiric equivalent to freshly baked Cinnabon.” Andy snorted.

              “There are vampire doctors?” Dirty asked, wide eyed, but was largely ignored.

              “Not a vampire doctor,” KTC said, his expression still baffled. “A magic doctor,” he said, like it should be obvious. “A doctor specifically trained to treat magical injuries on all kinds of creatures?”

              “Never heard of anything like it,” Joe said, and Pete and Andy nodded in agreement.

              “How have you been treating all of your injuries?” he half yelled.

              “We take care of them ourselves, usually,” Pete said. KTC’s face contorted into a look of frustrated concern.

              “Listen,” he sighed, scribbling down an address on a piece of paper and pressing it into Patrick’s hand. “Go here, and ask for Dr. Ferrum. She’s the best there is.”

              Patrick nodded. He looked dizzy as he sat up.

              “I’ll go with you,” Andy said quickly.

              The address Patrick was given led them to a tall building, practically identical to all the skyscrapers around it, with flowers growing outside of it. It appeared to be a small practice, shared between a few doctors, but none of the names on the sign said Ferrum.

              “Maybe she’s moved,” Patrick said, his voice almost hopeful.

              “What, afraid of needles?” Andy asked, amused.

              “Well, the last time I had blood drawn I was a special on a vampire menu,” Patrick muttered, but he squared his shoulders and walked into the glossy lobby. It was a little ritzy, but otherwise looked like a normal office building.

              Andy probably didn’t need to follow after him, and Patrick might’ve said no if Andy had asked whether he should come or not, but if they had bad information and things were going to get dicey, Andy had the best chance of getting them both back outside.

              “Is there a Doctor Ferrum here?” Patrick asked the receptionist before she even looked up all the way.

              “Doctor- er, what did you say again?” she asked politely, smiling a movie-star white smile. LA. Everyone was more over the top beautiful here.

              “Doctor Ferrum,” Patrick said clearly. The girl frowned, turned away from her computer, pulled out a clipboard, and lowered her voice.

              “Species of patient?” she asked in a clipped, businesslike voice.

              “Human,” Patrick said.

              “Manner of illness or injury?” she asked.

              “Jackal bite,” Patrick said, and her eyebrows raised, but she made no comment. She scribbled some information down, and looked up again.

              “Name?”

              “Patrick Stump.”

              “Brilliant,” she said, and ripped a phone off of its cradle. “Patient for you, Christine,” she said, nodded once, then set the phone back down.

              “Dr. Ferrum will be with you shortly,” she said, and went back to typing furiously, her long and manicured nails clacking on the keys.

              Andy and Patrick took seats next to each other, and Andy let his eyes wander. It looked more like a bank than a hospital to Andy, but maybe everything in LA was backwards.

              “Patrick Stump?”

              Andy looked up to see the doctor, a kindly looking woman that appeared to be in her mid forties, with short cropped blonde hair, glasses, and a soft smile. Her lab coat looked completely professional, but something seemed off about her, a little harder and sharper than most people Andy ran across.

              Patrick stood up and shook the woman’s hand, and Andy surreptitiously smelled her. Human, definitely, which he thought was odd, but he let it go.

              “My name is Christine Ferrum, would you care to follow me?” she asked, and, noticing Andy, gave him a warm smile as well. “Feel free to bring your friend.”

              Dr. Ferrum led them into the mirrored elevator, pressing a button that said UL3 on it.

              “Normally Alyssa would send you straight up to me, but there’s a bit of construction going on, and since it’s your first time coming, I didn’t want you to get lost,” she said. The elevator seemed to go up forever before it stopped, and she led them through a hallway.

              “So, how did you hear about my services?” she asked, walking at a brisk pace.

              “Um, our manager, Dan Suh, he told us about you,” Patrick said.

              “Ah, lovely,” Dr. Ferrum said. “You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t remember all of whom I’ve worked with, but I’m glad he sent you to me. I’m quite popular among, ah, your type,” she laughed.

              “My type?” Patrick asked. “Like, human?”

              “Not exactly,” she said, “I mean, mostly, I’m popular among celebrities, since that’s where I got my start, and I have a lot of references about my wonderful non-disclosure policy, if you’ll excuse my bragging.” She cast them yet another winning smile as she pulled open a door and led Patrick and Andy into what looked exactly like a regular doctor’s office, though she motioned for Patrick to sit in a regular chair rather than the examination table.

              “So, Alyssa tells me you’re suffering from a jackal bite?” she said, sitting back in a chair and folding her hands together. “When did you sustain the injury?”

              “Um,” Patrick looked a little sheepish, “A week ago.”

              “A week?” Dr. Ferrum asked, her eyes widening behind her glasses. “Goodness, it’s a wonder you’re standing upright.”

              “I have a history of dealing with blood loss,” Patrick laughed.

              “We do this a lot,” Andy explained. “We sort of. I mean, we try to keep the world safe. As best we can, and then we got an, um, assignment, I guess, from our manager, and it went south,” he became aware that the more he talked the more ridiculous it sounded, but Dr. Ferrum just laughed.

              “You’re certainly not the first,” she said, rummaging around in cupboards. “Though I didn’t think going out of your way to accept assignments was very popular anymore these days.”

              “Accepting assignments is a recent addition,” Patrick said, “We used to just kind of wing it.”

              “Well, it’s lucky you’ve never gotten too injured. Regular hospitals would not know how to treat this,” she said, pulling an opaque white container out of a cupboard, and she jerked her head towards the examination table. “Can you remove your shirt for me?”

              Patrick made a face, but pulled off his shirt. Andy wasn’t trying to look at him, but he couldn’t help but be slightly concerned at how pale and stretched Patrick looked.

              Dr. Ferrum unwound the dark red bandages and popped open the lid of the container, instantly overwhelming Andy with the scent of lavender and what smelled like- but surely couldn’t be- bone dust.

              She scooped out a large amount of thick, dark gray paste with her fingers, turning to Patrick with an apologetic expression.

              “This is going to sting,” she said, and smeared the paste all over the bite. The moment it made contact, Patrick’s knuckles went white where he gripped the edges of the examination table and he squeezed his eyes shut, hissing out air.

              “I know, I know, it’ll stop soon,” she said in a low, soothing voice. Andy stared at the mess of red and gray until Patrick began to relax again, untensing and breathing deeper.

              “Excellent,” Dr. Ferrum said, and she pulled out a fresh, much wider bandage, and began wrapping the wound in it, gray ointment and all. It didn’t seem to ooze into the bandage much, and afterwards she looked rather proud of herself.

              “There,” she said, satisfied. “You should be just fine, now.”

              Patrick stared down at his arm in disbelief.

              “What did you put on it?”

              “A mixture of my own creation,” she said with a light shrug. “Highly toxic to werewolves, so I’m trying to figure out something that could work for them as fast as this does, but as it is I have to work with blood clotting spells and Anansi stitches. Heals much slower, and deadly when combined with a preexisting heart condition, but I haven’t had much time to experiment recently,” she said, and sighed. “At any rate, I’d change the bandages every four hours for the next twelve, and then wear one bandage for the next twelve hours, after which you should be able to wash away the paste and be healed.”

              “This is… incredible,” Patrick laughed, tugging his shirt back on.

              “How have we never heard of you?” Andy asked, the slightest note of suspicion in his voice. Dr. Ferrum laughed her gentle laugh again.

              “Well, for one, as I mentioned before, I have an excellent non-disclosure policy. For another, not many musicians have been fighting monsters recently. I imagine my clientele simply don’t run in your social circle anymore.”

              “Lucky you know how to deal with humans,” Patrick said, massaging his injured arm subconsciously. “I take it that isn’t common.”

              “In music?” Dr. Ferrum sighed. “Not particularly. But humans are the great equalizer, and they’re the building blocks to everything else. Besides, the best hunter I ever met was human,” she said, and gave Patrick a warm smile. “That’s the thing about the people who always end up being targets. When everyone is attacking you, you end up being the strongest for it.”

              Whether true or not, Andy thought the whole speech was incredibly tactful of Dr. Ferrum, as Patrick looked significantly happier after she was done speaking.

              “How much does this cost?” Patrick asked, trying to bite back a smile.

              “Well, I have a program that allows people to pay whatever they can, typically, you know, hippocratic oath and all-”

              “I’m in Fall Out Boy,” Patrick said, still nodding and smiling at her. “I can pay quite a lot.”

              Dr. Ferrum winced.

              “Rent’s coming up soon,” she admitted, looking embarrassed. “How much is too much?”

              “You take credit?” Patrick asked. She smiled gratefully.

              “I’ll send the full cost downstairs, and you can settle it with Alyssa,” she said.

              “Send twice,” Patrick suggested kindly. “Don’t want you to lose your office.”

              “I can’t accept that, but thank you anyway, Mr. Stump,” she said, and handed both of them business cards. “But please, if you’re ever injured again, call me               anytime.” She gave them a warm smile, pressing a soft hand onto Andy’s shoulder before gesturing towards the doorway.

              After Patrick had paid and he was driving them back to the studio, Andy inspected the business card. The front said “Christine Ferrum, MD, DDS, DVM, MS, PharmD, DD, FAMNHECO.” It then listed the address of her office, an email, fax, and two phone numbers. On the back of the card, it read: “Proficient in the care of banshees, centaurs, changelings, demigods, demonata, fae, ghosts, giants, half-breeds, humans, incubi, mages, sirens, succubi, werewolves, vampires, and most non-human entities.”

              “Hell of a resume she’s got on here,” Andy muttered. Patrick nodded, seeming distracted by something.

              “You okay?” Andy asked, and instantly wished he could take it back. God only knew nothing could set Patrick off like checking up on him. It was therefore to Andy’s immense surprise that Patrick pursed his lips and shook his head, just slightly.

              “I was actually,” Patrick paused, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, “I was actually wondering. Jesus, nevermind.”

              “What?” Andy asked, frowning now.

              “Well I just… I wondered how you got over Andrea,” Patrick said, cringing even as he said it. Andy didn’t answer at first, and instead stared out the car window, thinking.

              “What makes you think I did?” he asked at length.

              “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Patrick said, pink rising in his cheeks as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I shouldn’t have asked, I was just-”

              “It’s okay,” Andy said flatly, “But I can’t tell you what you want me to. You don’t get over people dying. You don’t go back to before or anything. You just have to learn how to live with it.”

              “It’s stupid,” Patrick said. “And I’m sorry, really. It’s not even like he’s dead, I know he’s not, but-”

              “Might as well be,” Andy said bluntly, nodding in agreement. Patrick looked miserable.

              “So it never goes away?”

              Andy shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said again. “But I imagine it’s different. You had a bit more resolution.”

              “Resolution,” Patrick scoffed.

              Andy shrugged again. He wasn’t going to argue his point. He didn’t know enough about whatever had happened with Chicago to say much on the matter. But after a long pause, he sighed.

              “And it does get easier.”

              “What were you guys talking about earlier?” Patrick asked after a long period of silence. It was getting later in the afternoon, and traffic was terrible, so they were at a dead stop in the middle of the road.

              “Huh?” Andy asked.

              “Earlier,” Patrick said impatiently. “Korean Tom Cruise was trying to tell you something? I passed out before I could hear it.”

              “Ah, right. Shit,” Andy frowned. “The jackals are coming further south.”

              Patrick nearly rear ended the car in front of him.

              “But we killed them all!” he cried.

              Andy shrugged. “I know,” he said, “I can’t figure out what could have happened, but apparently there’s an enormous pack making its way towards LA. They’re on foot, but…” he trailed off.

              Andy had never understood the whole “With great power comes great responsibility” schtick. For most of his life, he’d been stronger and faster and more powerful than anyone he knew, but that just made drumming a little easier, walking home at night a little safer, and his life a little more convenient. He didn’t understand why superheroes felt the need to do the things they did when he was younger.

              But the older he got, the more involved he got in activist movements. After he became vegan, he understood a little better that there was more responsibility, responsibility he couldn’t shirk. Because if he knew something bad was happening and he had the ability to stop it, then it meant he had the responsibility to stop it. Involving his less thick skinned friends, however, was putting him in an uncomfortable moral gray area.

              “So now what?” Patrick asked. His fingertips were already pushed halfway under the new, sterile white bandages on his arm, scratching absentmindedly.

              “Now,” Andy said, heaving a deep sigh. “I think we regroup.”

              By the time they had returned to the studio it had been converted into a makeshift war room with a conference table in the center strewn with laptops and freshly printed papers. Joe, Pete, Dirty, and KTC were bent over the table, reading through the papers and occasionally marking something with a highlighter, but mostly looking frustrated.

              “Anything?” Andy asked as he walked in. Everyone’s heads snapped up, and Pete lit up when he saw Patrick, a huge grin spreading over his face.

              “You’re okay?” he asked, and Patrick rolled his eyes.

              “I’m fine,” he grumbled, sitting down at the table and lifting up a paper. He examined it for a moment, then threw it back down. “Do you know that’s the Wikipedia page for _The Omen_?”

              “Look, there isn’t actually that much information available on jackals, okay?” Dirty said defensively. Andy snorted, and plopped down to start reading. Most of the information was similar, or even less reputable. B-List horror movies and occasional forum posts about a friend of a friend. Nothing seemed particularly helpful.

              Eventually, Andy pushed the papers aside.

              “Why are we doing research?” he asked. “We already know what jackals are like, and they’re headed for LA. What’s the hold up?”

              “We’re trying to see if they have weaknesses,” KTC said, not bothering to look up, “The five of you barely made it out against ten, and there are more of them this time. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I don’t have anyone I can call and ask, so we triple check to see if we can fix this.”

              “Look, we know better what to expect this time,” Andy said, “And I really doubt that movie summaries are going to help us. How about we just go for it?”

              “Can you at least call in for help?” KTC asked.

              “Well, Panic is touring,” Pete said.

              “Likely for the rest of their lives,” Patrick muttered.

              “Gabe always gets really pissy when we ask him to risk his life for us,” Joe said.

              “I haven’t even talked to Travie about magic,” Pete fretted.

              “I think The Academy Is... is touring too,” Patrick said.

              “So I think we should probably just go for it,” Andy said again. “Where do you stand on that whole weapons thing, Pete?”

              “Working on it,” Pete said with a dissatisfied quirk of his mouth. “What if I use an axe?”

              “Absolutely not!” Patrick said, at the same time that Dirty said “no,” and Joe said “no way in hell.” Pete looked annoyed, and Andy spoke up to head off the argument.

              “Okay, where are they now?” he asked.

              “Last spotted at the edge of Angeles National Forest,” KTC reported.

              “What’s up with jackals and national parks?” Patrick wondered aloud.

              “North side, south side?” Andy prompted.

              “North, but it sounds like they’re going fast, and if they’re headed for LA…”

              “We can head them off at the edge of the forest!” Joe yelled, standing up so fast he knocked over his chair. He flashed a grin at the band, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that generally came from Pete when they were hunting monsters.

              “I think we should go shopping,” he said, “We’re going to need tents, sleeping bags, lots of firewood, maybe marshmallows if we’re feeling frisky. Tonight, we’re going camping.”

***

              Joe was, admittedly, a little bit cocky. He made the judicial decision that he deserved to feel some cockiness. He had defeated a prince of hell. He was a pack leader. He figured out all the weird, difficult werewolf stuff without any help at all from the woman who bit him. No other pack had done what they had done, and no other alpha had grown as strong as he. Joe knew how to save the day and keep his pack alive, and he could do so with ease.

              Of course, nothing could be so simple. That would imply that the universe was fair, or something equally ridiculous.

              Unlike their last camping trip to hunt jackals, this time they came prepared. The band and Dirty had dropped into a camping store (surprisingly not that hard to find, even in a major metropolitan area such as LA) and bought what claimed to be a four-man-tent, five sleeping bags, some fire starter logs, huge lighters, and copious amounts of bug repellent. They filled the rest of the minimal space in Pete’s trunk with junk food and water, and drove northeast through all the neighborhoods, gated or police patrolled, until they hit a dense, nearly black wall of trees and mountains that marked the edge of the forest.

              “These trees are fucking enormous,” Dirty said, letting out a low whistle.

              “They’re just pine trees,” Joe said, unimpressed. After seeing Pennsylvania, very little foliage left him awestruck. “They’ve got redwoods further north. Now those are impressive trees.”

              “Still, these are massive,” Dirty insisted.

              “Lord of the Rings looking shit,” Pete agreed sagely.

              “Anyway,” Patrick said pointedly, “Are we setting up out here, or further in?”

              “Further in,” Joe said. He hefted a large camping bag onto his shoulders like it was feather light, “But not too far. We wanna be able to reach the car afterwards, just like last time.”

              Patrick muttered something mutinous that sounded a lot like “did us so much good last time,” but he grabbed a cooler and followed Joe as Joe instantly walked away from the trail, deep into the thickest part of the trees in a valley between two mountains.

              The sun had not yet set, making the dark and cool atmosphere of the forest even more noticeable as they entered. It was very still and peaceful, the silence punctuated with nothing but their breath and footsteps as they plodded away from the sunny highway. It wasn’t quite eerie enough to freak Joe out, but after having spent so much time in cities and on the road, the sounds of nature felt deafening.

              Then Joe’s phone began to ring, the shrill tone chirping and echoing and shattering the spell. Joe swore as he fumbled to find the right button, answering the call annoyedly.

              “Hello?”

              “Hey.” It was KTC, his voice a little bit eager. “How’s hunting?”

              “We haven’t had a chance to start,” Joe grumbled, “What is it?”

              “Vampire attack, Santa Monica. Drink-to-Kill, so we need you to take him out as soon as you can.”

              “Where,” Joe asked, “Do you even get this information from?”

              “The whole music industry used to do this. Even though I caught the tail end of it, I still made a lot of magical contacts that have been waiting half a decade to get dedicated field agents again. We’re set for everything else, endless informants and bureaucrats to handle the rest of it,” he chuckled. “When can you be out?”

              “Um,” Joe stumbled a little on a gnarled tree root, just catching his balance before he could topple face-first into the rotting wood and pine needles that littered the forest floor. He was still keeping pace with his band, though so long as he kept walking, they showed no signs of stopping and turning around either. “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. Can it wait? We’re kind of in the middle of this whole jackal thing.”

              “Sure, sure, just don’t wait too long,” KTC advised, “California DTKs are nasty. They can down a grown man every other night, and since he fed last night…”

              Joe felt a little ill. “Yeah, I get the picture,” he said. “We’ll head out as soon as we finish up here. Bye.”

              He hung up abruptly, troubled by the thoughts of a killer on the loose that had to wait. He mulled over the call, letting his footsteps slow as he and his band crashed through the woods. The sticks snapping beneath their feet were as loud as thunder, as far as Joe was concerned.

              “What’s up?” Pete asked.

              “Apparently, we’re a hot commodity,” Joe said with a mocking grin. “The Justice League for hire. As soon as we finish the jackals, we’ve got a vampire to take out.”

              Patrick groaned, but Pete raised one eyebrow.

              “It’s a wonder that musicians have any time for music,” Pete joked, adjusting his shoulder straps as they delved deeper into the woods.

              Once neither Joe nor Andy could hear any sounds of the highway, they decided to set up camp in a small clearing they could find. It was near enough to civilization that escape was possible, but far enough away so as not to spook the animals. Upon putting together their tent, they discovered that, while it could technically fit four men, these men would all need to be smaller than Pete, and certainly not lying down. Joe and Andy volunteered to stay outside, and, after taking one look at Pete and Dirty and the conspiratorial glances they were sharing, Patrick opted to remain outside as well.

              While it was still light, they tried to bring together enough branches to start a fire, one that would hopefully last a little longer than a bag of Doritos. Once the sun had finally set, there was a cheerful campfire going in the middle of the small circle they had cleared, sparks flying up till they were indistinguishable from the stars. It was all pretty relaxing, and easy to forget that they were there with a purpose.

              After they’d eaten and a few hours had passed after dark, Joe finally spoke up about the one puzzle piece that had been bugging him.

              “The thing is,” Joe said thoughtfully, watching the low flames of the fire, “This is really unusual for jackals. They don’t hunt in packs, you know. Not often, anyway, and never cross country like this. They’re scavengers, opportunistic. Both the real ones and the mythical ones.”

              “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Pete agreed, leaning in with a pinched look on his face. “But it can only really mean one thing, you know.”

              Silence hung heavy over the campsite for a second before Patrick spoke up.

              “Someone’s making them do this?”

              “Or something,” Andy said darkly.

              “Given the pace they travelled at, these can’t be the ones we injured. They have to be new. And jackals don’t sound that common,” Joe added.

              “All the horror movies say they’re servants of hell,” Dirty said. “Maybe a demon has them working for him.”

              “Impossible,” Pete said. “Demons have next to no interaction with the modern world, and the ones that do are pathetically powerless, like Murmur.”

              “Who’s Murmur?” Dirty asked.

              “Think our good friend from the Killers is out for revenge?” Patrick asked.

              “Did you guys fight a demon?” Dirty asked.

              “I didn’t give him the kind of alpha command that can be ignored,” Joe said.

              “I’m serious, did you guys fight a demon?” Dirty asked again, his voice slightly higher.

              “Yeah, Gerard Way did a Star Wars exorcism, it was pretty cool,” Andy said.

              “Holy shit, what?” Dirty asked.

              “Then who could it possibly be?” Patrick insisted.

              “Well, we’ve got plenty of enemies,” Joe said. “I mean, I can think of a pretty long list of magical creatures that would be happier with us dead, but this doesn’t seem directed at us. They’re trying to get the jackals into LA to ravage it, which sounds a bit more sinister to me than a grudge against a rock band.”

              The band grew quiet as they thought about it, and Joe poked the fire where the flames were sinking into embers. More time passed as they talked softly, and it was nearly two when Joe next checked his watch, eliciting a soft hiss of frustration.

              “They should be here,” he muttered, kicking a small rut in the earth.

              “Maybe they’re not coming this way,” Andy said. Joe swore, his earlier worry enveloping him, stronger this time.

              “We have to stop these things before they get to LA,” he said. “Aside from the carnage, can you imagine the panic? There’d be a witch hunt for anything canine in the whole damn state! And whoever is controlling these things could probably send more, since he clearly doesn’t care much about secrecy.”

              “We’ll stop them before it gets that far,” Patrick said, but he sounded thoroughly unconvinced. Pete winced, and Joe swore again, stomping out what remained of the fire till there was nothing but a soft red glow coming from the embers.

              “I’ll stay up and keep watch for anything,” Joe said, “You guys get some rest. We can try and track these things in the morning.”

              In truth, it didn’t take much convincing. And even if Joe had wanted to try and fall asleep with the rest of them, he doubted he could, feeling as anxious as he did and trying to ignore the sounds of Dirty’s snoring echoing through the valley. Patrick and Andy soon looked like they were asleep as well, their breathing growing slow and even, until the only signs of anyone but Joe being awake were Pete’s eyes, wide open and catlike as he peered out of the tent every few minutes. Joe considered trying to tell him to go to sleep, but he had no need to fight a losing battle.

              Joe tried to keep an eye out on the mountains, to see movement from far away if anything was coming, but his attention kept being magnetically drawn back to the low, gently shifting embers in the fire. The faded reds melded back and forth, soft and eerie, and Joe couldn’t tear his eyes away, even as they got dimmer, dimmer, and dimmer.

              “What was that?” Pete hissed in Joe’s ear, his voice taut with panic, hand clamped down on Joe’s shoulder.

              “Whazzah?” Joe mumbled, his mouth feeling strangely thick as he jerked his head up. There was almost no light left in the fire. At least an hour must have passed.

              “I heard a howl,” Pete said, and Joe swore, jumping to his feet and pulling his gun out of his front pocket, kicking Andy and Patrick awake as he did so. Even as he roused them, Joe could already hear the padding of soft paws, dozens of them coming towards them, and his breath quickened.

              “We’ve got company,” he said to Andy, and both his and Patrick’s eyes flew open.         

              “How many?” Andy asked.

              “I can’t see them, fucker, it’s dark,” Joe said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

              “Because it sounds like we’re being surrounded. Actually, it sounds like we’ve already been surrounded,” Andy said.

              “Yeah, thanks,” Joe said. “I might have fucked up. Do you know how many?”

              “Twenty?” Andy guessed. The look Joe gave him must have been pretty murderous, because he immediately said, “I mean, high estimate.”

              Joe whirled around, looking for something, anything that might help them, and eventually grabbed a stick that was slightly thinner and longer than a baseball bat. He threw it to Pete.

              “Hit hard, okay?” he said. Pete looked like he might throw up.

              “I was more of a soccer guy to tell you the truth,” Pete said. A ripping snarl came from just a few feet behind Joe, and there was no time to argue.

              This fight was unlike their last one in all the wrong ways. The moon was close to full now, so it wasn’t difficult to see the jackals once they were in the clearing, but the creatures had the higher ground this time. They kept jumping at them from above, claws digging into Joe’s face as they fell to the ground, howling and furious. Also unlike the last fight, there simply wasn’t time for Joe to try and make sure Pete and Dirty were safe. From the moment Joe shifted, there were never less than three jackals ripping and tearing at his flanks, snapping their jaws and trying to knock him down.

              Joe felt sturdier with all four limbs on the ground, but the sheer number of their enemies was overwhelming. He had but to knock one aside for another to be trying to rip his stomach to shreds.

              Once he had shaken himself free of the creatures’ tiny claws, he sprinted across the clearing to Pete, sinking his teeth into the neck of one of them that had latched itself onto Pete’s leg and snapping its spine.

              Stronger even in battle, Joe could feel his band through the pack bond, could feel Patrick holding his own, proud as he was afraid, slicing the animals in half. He could feel Andy, detesting the carnage but killing quickly and efficiently to protect whoever couldn’t. He could feel Pete floundering but uninjured, and couldn’t feel Dirty at all, due to the lack of a bond, but couldn’t smell copious amounts of human blood either.

              Joe paused in the fighting for a moment to take in the scene, and saw a pair of eyes he did not recognize staring at him from a few trees away, delving back into darkness upon being spotted. Joe snarled, his hackles raised and fur standing slightly on end. Using as much focus as he could, he thought “ _Come with me_ ,” as a pack command, and took off after the man.

              “He’s gotta be kidding, right?” Patrick half-groaned and half-shouted, but Joe heard footsteps running after him, albeit slower.

              They were running away from the jackals and their teeth too big for their mouths as they ran toward whomever Joe had seen, the man who had to be the one controlling the creatures.

              Joe should have been able to catch up with ease, but the surviving jackals turned out to seriously hamper running. After a few minutes of running, Joe was bleeding rather profusely out of one leg. Though it appeared as though all of the creatures were gone, their corpses littering the ground, the four of them still jumped at the sound of twigs snapping. The trail was still fresh, even though the man was far ahead of them, and Joe in his wolf form could follow it with ease. It would probably be easier to explain his thinking if he shifted back into human form, but this would go faster with him as a wolf. Also, he had left his clothing behind with the tent. Occupational hazard of shapeshifting, he figured.

              Joe could smell it before he saw it. He was inhaling deeply to follow the trail when he was completely overloaded with what smelled like incense, only stronger than any he’d ever come across before. It choked up his airways and he started to cough as he smelled it, the heavy perfume overwhelming him and making his eyes water. He looked up to see smoke billowing up into the night sky, a murky, opaque white, too thick to be natural. Joe approached more cautiously, moving through a break in the trees to see a small dilapidated shack. It looked completely dark and uninhabited, save for the smoke that poured out of the chimney.

              Creeping forward, Joe nudged the door inwards with his nose, able to pad forward much softer than his bandmates. The sound of them walking made him pray that the man they were searching for was deaf, but upon looking in the shack, he appeared to not have noticed anything at all.

              “Very strong, very strong indeed,” the man said, his voice sounding younger and rougher than Joe would imagine. He was rocking back and forth in front of the fireplace where he fanned whatever was putting off all of this smoke with no accompanying flames, “A fighter, not incredible, but a fighter nonetheless. He has no slaves, only allies. He doesn’t use his gifts on them.”

              The man kept rocking back and forth, a few pained whimpers coming out as he rocked. He looked like he was in agony the entire time, though Joe could see next to nothing of his face. Something glittered from the ground: a shard of a mirror, its jagged edge pointed at the contents of the fireplace, blood splattered on top of it.

              “The men he is with appear to be his friends… they stopped your servants with ease… thank you for all you’ve done.”

              Joe snarled just before the man got up, turning around so quickly that his long coat swirled around him. The man held in his palm a small flame, the hand he held it in burnt black down to the bone. The flame illuminated his haggard face, young but gaunt, his lips chapped to the point of bleeding, and his face the pallor of chalk.

              “The indomitable Joe Trohman, I would assume?” he said, twisting his face into a humorless smile. Joe bristled, but did not move, unsure as to whether he ought to attack or not.

              “Who are you?” Pete demanded, stepping forward to be level with Joe. The man’s empty smile widened.

              “A cautionary tale,” he said. “One about acting on incomplete knowledge.” He waved his burning hand, charred pieces of flesh crumbling to the ground. Joe whined and stepped back.

              “Who were you communicating with?” Pete asked.

              “Do you know why they burn candles in church?” the man asked, his smile turning into nearly a leer. “The smoke rises. People used to believe that if they lit a candle while they prayed, the smoke would take their prayer all the way up to heaven. To God.” He began to cackle.

              “I don’t believe in God, and I doubt you do either,” Pete said. “Now _tell me who you were talking to_ ,” he demanded, the room lighting up gold for a moment.

              “I can’t!” he groaned, closing his eyes and turning from Pete’s eyes, “I can’t say his name!”

              “Who?” Pete asked again, less angry, more of something else. Something between fear and dread and hope that Joe could feel pulsating through the pack bond.

              “Just a concerned father,” the man said, and he fell to the floor, palm first, sending the dry wood floor up in bright purple flames.

***

              Pete stared at the enormous purple bonfire for a few minutes after they had run from the blaze. All the light was wrong, too cold and uncomfortable, the purple fire almost reminiscent of blacklight, like they were in a hip new dance club in the middle of the woods in Southern California. The fire had burned too bright and too high and too fast, but Pete had chalked that up to it being some kind of magical fire. He could think of no other reasonable explanation. With California as dry as it was, they only had mere seconds to dive out of the house and watch the flames dance higher, still only emitting a pure white smoke.

              The snapping and cracking of the flames were deafening in the forest, and Pete didn’t think he’d be able to hear his own voice even if he had wanted to talk, which he absolutely did not. All he could think of was the delirious, burning man and the things he’d said. “ _Just a concerned father_.” Unless Andy’s father had faked his death, Pete could only think of one parent that would communicate using smoke.

              Perhaps he had been too quick to assume that Dirty was wrong when he pointed to demons.

              But so many things didn’t line up for Pete. Why now? And what could he possibly want? Not to destroy Los Angeles, apparently. But certainly to get Pete’s attention, which he now had.

              In truth, Pete had never even spoken to his parents about his father. His _other_ father, technically. When his mom explained who he was, he asked how it was possible to have three parents, and she had done her best to explain. His parents were his physical parents, and every genetic code in his body was the combination of his real parents. He looked like them. He was their son. But his soul, somehow, was the product of his mother and something else. Someone else. A demon she had never given Pete the name of, something powerful and dark and always lurking in the back of his mind. His mother, of course, wasn’t human either, not when he was conceived. One fae child was the price, she explained, for her mortality. To live and die as any other human with the man she loved.

              Pete had spent a long time resting in the safety blanket that his father would probably have no interest in him until he matured, and fae did not mature on human time. Given that Pete wasn’t entirely sure he was mature by human standards, he assumed he had a long time to wait before it was even an issue.

              “Well, I’ll give him this,” Andy said, his voice sounding small as usual, but still easily heard over the fire. “He has a certain dramatic flair.”

              “That’s one way of putting it,” Pete responded, the words coming out without him thinking about saying them. His body was running on autopilot, completely separate from his thoughts.

              “Should we, you know, do something?” Patrick asked. He had one hand pressed a deep gash on his side, trying to stem the flow of blood, but he held himself tall and sturdy. Stoic. He had become so much stronger in the past couple of years. Sometimes Pete could barely see any resemblance to the kid he had started the band with.

              “Because, you know,” Patrick continued, “Only we can prevent wildfires and all that.”

              “I think wildfires are the least of our problems,” Pete said, and Joe made a grumbling noise that he assumed was agreement.

              “Should we at least watch it till it dies down?” Patrick asked.

              “Campfire part two,” Pete joked, when he heard the distant sound of a yell, and Joe’s howl broke through the night, one loud thought accompanying it. “ _Dirty!_ ”

              “Son of a-!” Pete yelled, spinning around in the dirt and nearly falling down as they bolted back to their campsite.

              Joe and Andy were already there by the time Pete stumbled into the moonlit clearing. The tent was badly ripped and Dirty looked shell-shocked but uninjured. Andy, meanwhile, was lying down on his stomach, one hand outstretched to the smallest, scruffiest looking jackal Pete had seen yet. It was trying to growl menacingly at Andy, but somehow it came out sounding more like a whimper.

              “C’mere, buddy,” Andy said, his voice soft and gentle, the same voice he used on Carmilla when she was tired. The jackal looked dubious.

              “That thing is bloodthirsty!” Dirty said.

              “Well, she’s starving, what do you expect?” Andy asked sharply. Human again, and seeming to respond to some silent order, Joe grabbed something out of a backpack that had slumped on the ground and handed it to Andy. Andy stretched the rubbery hotdog out, and the jackal took a tentative step forward, ripping the meat away and devouring it.

              “Good girl,” Andy said soothingly, and ran one hand down the jackal’s head. It jerked back, but didn’t snap at Andy.

              “Oh, come on, you cannot keep a jackal as a pet!” Pete groaned.

              “I’m not going to keep a jackal as a pet. It’s a wild animal,” Andy said. He grabbed another hot dog and lobbed it far off into the trees, and the jackal chased clumsily after it. Andy stood up and brushed his pants off.

              “But we don’t have to kill the innocent in anticipation of it being guilty,” Andy said. Dirty shuddered, and Patrick finally skidded into the clearing.

              “Is everything-” he half wheezed, “-okay?”

              “Yeah, fine,” Dirty said, his voice a little higher than usual. “Ahem. What happened to you guys anyways? Where did you go?”

              “We took out the rest of the jackals,” Joe said, tying off wounds with scraps of fabric and the precious few bandages they had brought with them. Pete was bleeding rather profusely from one of his legs too, he remembered, and he grabbed a bandage roll himself to at least stem the flow of blood. “And then followed the guy who set them on us to a cabin. He was trying to do some kind of ritual there, communicate with-” Joe shot a far too observant look at Pete, “-someone.”

              “Like a demon?” Dirty asked, and Joe sighed.

              “Yeah, probably like a demon.”

              “Shit,” Dirty said. Pete wanted to say that he had no idea.

              “ _A concerned father._ ” And what the hell was Pete supposed to make of that?

              They all decided to leave early, attempt to get in a few hours of sleep before tacking the vampire in Santa Monica, but the whole ride back, Pete kept thinking about their small conversation. He needed more to work with than a warning from Bloody Mary a few years back that his father had something to do with mirrors. What of that was relevant and what was just coincidence? The sweet smelling smoke? The purple flames? The messenger burning alive? None of that reminded Pete of any demon he had heard of. But he couldn’t very well call his mother and ask for his father’s name. She wouldn’t take it well, that much he was sure of.

              Pete dropped off Joe and then Andy at the place they were renting for the duration of recording, and before he could get back to his place, Dirty asked to go to the airport.

              “Not that this hasn’t been fun and all, but I was gonna visit my family, and if you guys are dealing with a vampire, now sounds like the perfect time,” he said, giving Pete a wide grin. “I don’t think the whole superhero-schtick is my thing. But y’all have fun.”

              From LAX back to Pete’s house, Patrick kept nodding off against the window, but he woke up in time to walk inside. Pete assumed he would be going straight to bed when they got in, but Patrick grabbed Pete’s arm before Pete could finally try and find a few hours sleep.

              “Can we talk?” Patrick asked, and Pete sat immediately down on the couch, trying not to look too trepidatious. Patrick looked too perceptive, too worried, and his aura was reaching out to Pete’s in concern.

              “Was that about your…?” Patrick trailed off, and Pete nodded.

              “You doing okay?” Patrick asked. “I mean, you know, actually?”

              Pete took a long, deep breath. “I guess so? I’ve been trying to figure it out for a while, but maybe he was really just watching. He does that,” Pete made a face, and Patrick’s face echoed it.

              “Do you have any idea who…?” Pete shook his head.

              “I know he’s powerful, but can’t physically go anywhere,” Pete said. “And apparently he wanted a fae child. And that’s it.”

              Patrick grimaced, his face scrunched up, but he scooted closer, wrapping his arms around Pete.

              “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” he promised, his breath soft and warm on Pete’s neck. “We can always figure it out. Come on, what’s a pervy demon to the calamitous Pete Wentz? Multi-time world saver extraordinare?”

              “You’re a fucking nerd,” Pete laughed, but already feeling slightly warmer. He wasn’t about to get abandoned to deal with any magical bullshit on his own, not with Patrick around.

              “Anyway,” Patrick pulled back, “I’m guessing I should let you sleep, since I’m assuming you didn’t get any last night.”

              “When do I?” Pete asked.

              “But,” Patrick continued, and Pete groaned. Patrick smiled a little, “But I also wanted to say… thanks.” He flushed slightly, looking embarrassed as he spoke. “I mean, for everything. Forcing me to stay here and eat real food and interact with other people, even when I really don’t want to. You’re, um, a good friend,” Patrick said, looking at the ground.

              “Anything for you,” Pete said. “As long as you go back to that doctor again tomorrow. I think we all need to this time.”

              “Probably,” Patrick yawned. “Anyway, seven AM, just in time for bed, so I’ll see you,” he waved one hand in the air, “I dunno, whenever.”

              “I’ll make you pancakes again,” Pete beamed.

              “Learn another recipe!” Patrick said, halfway out the door, but his aura was glowing a brilliant yellow, the color of concentrated sunshine.

              Pete’s favorite color.

              And a very different worry from anything to do with his demon father began coursing through Pete.

              He had been so upset when he found out that Patrick was involved with Chicago, and Pete had assumed it was because he was worried about Patrick, worried he would get his heart broken again. That theory had made sense until a few weeks ago, when Chicago had lost human form, becoming a city once more, and rather than being devastated for Patrick, all Pete could feel was relief. Satisfaction. He felt somehow justified, and it had made him wonder if his distaste for Chicago had come not from worry over Patrick’s well-being, but from jealousy.

              As much as he tried to shy away from the thought, he brought Patrick to stay with him, and suddenly things were different. Every time Patrick did a little better, laughed louder, ate more, made some sarcastic quip meant to be funny rather than biting, Pete could feel his heart throbbing in his chest, too large to fit properly. Every time he saw Patrick’s aura glow brighter, bottled sunshine gleaming all around him when Pete did something right and made him shine pure happiness, Pete felt so happy all over that his chest ached.

              And Pete tried over and over to tell himself that this was crazy. That this was Patrick, still the twerp with no fashion sense that wanted to be a drummer. This was still the guy that pissed in Joe’s bed when he was angry, and never did laundry, and sweat gallons whenever he did anything remotely exerting. That he had only ever been with one boy, for fuck’s sake, and the boy was a city.

              But Pete’s mind had never liked to be reasoned with, and Pete knew how to make Patrick light up like the sun after rain.

              And Pete was deeply, madly, painfully in love with him.

 


	2. Living Dead Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While trying to investigate a dangerous monster and a missing friend, the boys in the band discover the frightening truth behind a benign old ghost story…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW in this chapter for pretty heavy use of recreational drugs.

 

              “Am I interrupting something?”

              Pete jumped out of his seat, landing ass first on the ground and staring up at Patrick in shock. He realized that it might look bad, his living room, covered as it was in candles and incense and with a heavy glass decanter of a pale green liquid in the middle. Patrick had one eyebrow raised, his hair soft and rumpled. He was wearing pajamas. It was a pretty cute look, but Pete tried not to think that with little success.

              “We’re about to go on a spiritual journey,” Gabe said, and Pete would have laughed if Gabe hadn’t been so dead serious. “Want to join us?”

              Patrick’s eyebrows raised, if possible, higher.

              “‘A spiritual journey’?” he asked dubiously, eyeing the decanter that sat in the middle. “Is that peyote?”

              “Don’t knock it till you try it, dawg,” Travie said sagely. “We’ve got plenty to share.”

              “Um, thanks but no thanks,” Patrick said, wrinkling his nose. “I’m okay. Do you guys need a babysitter for your spiritual journey, or are you gonna be okay?”

              “I’ve done this before,” Gabe said. Needlessly, in Pete’s opinion. He poured the green tea into three separate containers, a look of intense focus on his face.

              “Hey, didn’t you have a date tonight?” Pete asked Patrick, who was still standing there, watching them. He knew Patrick had a tendency to get a little overbearing when it came to illicit substances, and he had planned this evening under the impression that he wasn’t going to be home.

              “Why the fuck would you think that?” Patrick asked.

              “You said you had ‘big plans’ for Saturday night,” Pete said, confused. Patrick rolled his eyes in response. “You winked at me as you said it. And I know you weren’t lying.”

              “Uh, yeah,” Patrick let out a derisive laugh. “That was in reference to my plans to jack off all night.”

              Pete flushed at the bluntness of the response while Travie and Gabe howled with laughter. Pete hated the self-deprecating edge Patrick’s words had, but Patrick flashed Pete a grin, and the moment of concerned pity passed nearly as soon as it came.

              “Wanna join us instead?” Gabe asked, some of the serious leaking out of his tone in favor of excitement. “Pete’s a lightweight, so we’ve got plenty.”

              “Hey!” Pete complained, “That was a completely different situation!”

              Patrick looked between them uncertainly.

              “C’mon, we don’t bite,” Travie said, “Andy’s not here.”

              “Are you peer pressuring me?” Patrick asked, still sounding dubious. But, to Pete’s surprise, he plopped down onto the ground with a stiff exhale as he pulled his legs in, casting Gabe a nervous looking smile. “Man, my sixth grade D.A.R.E. representative would be so disappointed in me for giving in.”

              “I think Brendon was wearing his D.A.R.E. shirt the first time I got drunk with him,” Pete said fondly, getting another round of laughter out of his friends. After a bit of laughter, Gabe cleared his throat and gave Pete a meaningful look. Pete bit his lip to stop laughing. After all, he had promised he was going to take this seriously.

              Seeming to sense the shift in mood, Travie pulled a large white taper candle across the floor to himself and snapped his fingers. A small, blue-white flame sparked to life from the tip of his index finger, and he turned to grin at a shocked and disbelieving looking Patrick, whose eyes were wide as they fixated on the flame.

              The four of them were silent for a minute as Patrick stared. Eventually, Gabe giggled, and Travie chuckled as well as he held his finger up to the candle wick, lighting it and then letting the flame on his finger flicker out. Another beat of silence passed.

              “Okay, I give,” Patrick said, “What the fuck kind of monster does _that_?”

              Travie’s responding grin nearly split his face. “Not a monster. A demigod,” he said importantly.

              “More of a semi-demigod,” Gabe scoffed. “And that’s just your family’s story.”

              “How else do you think we can all do this?” Travie asked.

              “Your whole family can control fire?” Patrick asked in a weak voice.

              “Control is a bit of an overstatement,” Pete snorted, and Travie punched him in the arm.

              “Can I have a moment? Please?” Travie complained.

              “All he can do is be a human lighter,” Gabe said.

              “Oh, well, if that’s all,” Patrick said sarcastically, muttering under his breath. Pete felt a little bad at the jealous tones in Patrick’s aura, but it was still pretty funny.

              Pete turned off the lights while Gabe began pouring the tea into four separate glasses, speaking words of warning Pete had already hear to Patrick.

              “Now, it’s gonna be pretty bitter, but you have to drink the whole thing undiluted for the best effect. You can drink water when you’re done, and actually, you probably should, you don’t want to get dehydrated…”

              Pete sat back down on the floor, the four of them now positioned in a loose circle, and he grabbed his glass off the ground. It looked murky and dangerous, but even as he glanced up doubtfully at Gabe, his friend winked at him and drained the cup, only scrunching his face up slightly.

              Patrick and Travie began drinking at the same time, Travie making a grossed out face, and Patrick coughing and sputtering a little, but it didn’t look too horrible, so Pete poured a huge portion of his glass down his throat, and instantly spat half of it back out, gagging on the taste.

              “Dude,” Travie laughed, while Pete made faces and let his tongue hang out, desperate to get the taste out of his mouth. He felt like he might throw up.

              “You gonna be okay?” Gabe asked, and Pete nodded miserably, trying to ignore the smug look on Patrick’s face as he finished the rest of his portion.

              Pete slowly drank the rest of his tea with more reserve, and then pulled his legs closer to his body and rested his chin on his knees, trying to stave off the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm him.

              “Now what?” Pete asked, trying not to sound petulant.

              “Well, ideally, you meditate…” Gabe trailed off, sounding like he was already completely certain that Pete had no plans of meditating. Which, in all fairness, was correct.

              “All the creepy candlelight, it kinda reminds me of all the campfire ghost stories you tell when you’re a kid,” Travie said, chuckling darkly. “Except now all the ghost stories are coming to life.”

              “I mean, I don’t remember the campfire story about a demigod rockstar,” Patrick said.

              “Yeah, but the shit you guys do?” Travie shook his head. “You know, normal people don’t chase down the monsters.”

              “I never asked to chase down monsters,” Patrick said, but he didn’t sound unhappy about it.

              “Even still,” Travie shook his head, “I am a mythical creature, and I’ve never had a freaky paranormal experience.” He was lying. Pete could feel the tug in the back of his stomach, and he looked up from the floor, still focused on not vomiting, but now with his head cocked to the side, looking curiously at Travie.

              “Well, that wasn’t a lie when you told me last week,” Pete said, and Travie grimaced.

              “What happened?” Gabe asked, looking up curiously as well.

              Travie had a tendency to avoid all things supernatural like the plague. Pete hadn’t even found out he had any powers until a few weeks ago, when he’d found Travie balancing a small flame on the palm of his hand. Travie had informed Pete, almost harshly, that he had no interest in chasing down monsters or any of that “white dad in a horror movie bullshit” that Pete constantly involved his band in, and Pete could accept that. But if something had happened recently, why hadn’t he called Pete about it?

              “Fuck, I don’t know, it was just weird,” Travie said, looking uncomfortable. But all three of his friends were staring at him, so he rolled his eyes, pulling the candle in closer again, only adding to the campfire feel of the setting.

              “Alright, well, I was driving the other day, and I saw this girl on the side of the road. You know, she was really cute and looked lost, but not drunk or anything. When she saw my car she stuck out her thumb, and I thought she was kind of crazy for trying hitchhike, this like, really tiny girl, it’s probably so dangerous, but I picked her up. She said she was just trying to get home, gave me the address. I’d never heard of the place, but she gave me directions, and it took me out to the middle of nowhere. Just when she told me we were at the place, I had to slam on the brakes, and when I turned to see if she was okay, she was gone!

              “I walked up to the door to see if she had just gone in really fast or something, and an old woman answered the door. I asked if she had a daughter or something, and she teared up a little, and said her daughter had died a long time ago. I saw an old photo on the wall, and it was the same girl. So I guess she was a ghost or something.”

              The room was silent for a long time before Patrick spoke up.

              “Nice. Original. I hadn’t heard that story since I was twelve,” he snorted.

              “He’s not lying,” Pete said, frowning. Patrick rolled his eyes.

              “The vanishing hitchhiker. Come on. That’s on the same level as the babysitter who keeps getting creepy phone calls and then has to leave immediately because the calls are coming from inside the house,” Patrick said, wiggling his fingers and making a mock-scared face.

              “I mean, I’ve never really heard of ghosts doing that,” Gabe said. “Or, you know, ghosts in general. Are you sure about what you think you saw?”

              “Hey, you don’t have to believe me,” Travie said, holding his hands up. “The way I see it, it’s over, no harm done.”

              “I guess it doesn’t sound particularly malevolent,” Pete said thoughtfully.

              “Oh, hell no, we are not tracking down a kids’ ghost story,” Patrick said.

              “Yeah, that would be almost as ridiculous as summoning Bloody Mary,” Pete said, and Patrick’s aura glimmered with embarrassment.

              Their conversation began to dim down as they tried to quiet down, to focus as they waited for the effects to kick in. Gabe seemed strangely eager as the candles burnt lower, like he was waiting for something extraordinary to happen. Patrick kept fidgeting, and Pete, meanwhile, wasn’t entirely sure what he was waiting for until he felt something shift, like everything in reality was just slightly tilted.

              And then the world lit up.

              Everything had auras all of a sudden, even the inanimate objects, every bit as strong as human auras, pulsing with emotion. And all of his friends’ auras were magnified, bigger and brighter and more alive than Pete had ever seen them, everything so bright that his eyes hurt. Tentatively, he moved his hand in front of his face, and saw the way his aura interacted with the auras of everything around it, the way they were all touching. No, they weren’t touching, they were all the same aura, just one, affected by whatever was eating up physical space inside of it.

              It was all incredible, and as Pete turned to see if his friends could see what he could, Gabe just nodded solemnly.

              “Amazing, huh?” he asked. “You have to try it outside. But first, you hungry?”

              Pete hadn’t been particularly hungry, but upon tasting a grape on the plate of food they had brought out, he discovered that nothing had ever tasted that good in his entire life. He could taste the grape’s aura as he ate if and even though he knew he was high, and none of this might be real, it felt amazing. Like he was one with the universe.

              Pete had been high before, and it always did strange things in conjunction with his powers, but this was an entirely different experience. Everything he saw was glowing, especially Patrick, who was glowing the brilliant yellow that tugged at Pete’s heart whenever he saw it. Giving off that much shining light, he looked ethereal.

              “Dude, you ever think of, like, snakes?” Gabe asked. Pete turned to look at him, where Gabe was a shimmering purple.

              “What about them?” Pete asked.

              “They’re just,” Gabe sighed. “Fuck, man, we’re connected to them, you know?”

              “We’re connected to everything,” Pete said, and Gabe grinned at him.

              Gabe had set the group of them up for a fairly mild evening. The effects of the tea were fairly long lasting, but all they had planned to do was talk to each other and try different types of food, and, of course, think, because thinking was entertaining enough to occupy Pete for what felt like endless hours, and turned out to be mere minutes.

              Pete should have known the entire experience was too good to be true.

              After a long while, they noticed Gabe was gone, and Travie suggested that he might have gone to bed, and that they should probably do the same. While Pete hated to waste any of his experience, he had to admit that sleep might come easier now than it usually did, and he felt tired for once, so it sounded especially nice.

              After sending Patrick and Travie off to guest bedrooms, Pete went up to his own, his head still airy with contentment and peace with the entire world.

              The moment he shut the door, though, all of the lights were gone, and where everything was glowing with life a moment ago, it was now swirling with shadow. Pete felt like his lungs only had half their original capacity as he looked at the darkness surrounding everything. His heart picked up speed as he held his hand out in front of his face again, only to see absence where his aura had been hours earlier. He gulped and waved his hand, still seeing nothing, like he was a corpse, an empty shell. Something had changed.

              “Hello?” he called out, his voice cracking slightly. A throaty, familiar chuckling echoed around the room, and Pete instinctively dove for his bed, pulling the covers up over his head to block out the sight of whatever was moving around in his room.

              Without sight, however, he could still hear the shadows moving, rustling, like anti-auras, the opposite of the light he usually saw surrounding people. He whimpered as the shadows increased in volume, till the noise was nearly earsplitting. They were trying to say something, but the words weren’t quite formed, not quite real yet. Pete tried to ignore them, steady his breathing as he stared at the individual threads making up the blanket that lay almost directly over his eyes.

              Whatever the shadows were trying to say, they weren’t powerful enough to say it, but Pete knew they were trying to speak to him, and he had no desire to hear it. He was doing a horrible job trying to get his breathing to calm down, panting and focusing on the rapid thrumming of his heartbeat when he saw a huge light breaking up the darkness.

              Pete threw the blanket off to see who had opened the door, but instead saw that the light was another aura, emanating from Hemingway as he trotted up to Pete’s bed. Pete made a wordless, happy cry, and scooped the dog up, pulling him onto the bed with him, and fell asleep with his face buried in his glowing fur, holding tightly to his dog to make sure he staved off whatever was there in the darkness. Eventually, he fell asleep.

              When Pete woke up the next day, his chest still hurt, and he was still slightly shaky from the fear from the night before, but he appeared to have slept for a very long time, and all the shadows and bright auras were gone. He wandered downstairs in the hopes that eating something would help calm him down, all while vowing that he was never going to try peyote again.

              “Morning,” Patrick said, smirking slightly over the top of his coffee mug. Travie was making breakfast, and Pete’s chest loosened at the sight of the both of them.

              “Hungry? It won’t taste as good as last night,” Travie warned, prodding something in a skillet that snapped in response. It smelled good, but Pete still felt residual nausea, and instead shook his head tightly.

              “Where’s Gabe?” he asked, sitting down at the counter and leaning in closer to Patrick, who threw an arm around him. Pete eagerly leaned into the physical contact, feeling even better.

              “I think he’s sleeping still,” Travie said, sliding an omelet out onto a plate in front of Patrick. It really did smell good, and Pete sort of hoped Travie would stick around until he got hungry. He must be a decent cook, if he could throw together a recipe that nice with the scant ingredients in Pete’s fridge.

              “How’d you sleep?” Patrick asked, frowning like he already knew the answer.

              “I slept fine,” Pete said, hedging the answer, before admitting, “It was falling asleep that gave me all the trouble. Turned into a really bad trip once I got up to my bedroom.”

              “Shit, I’m sorry, man. You doing okay?” Travie asked, and Pete nodded.

              “Not your fault. I just don’t think hallucinogens are really for me. Ever.”

              Travie nodded absently, whisking another bowl of eggs together. Pete was glad to have them around. It made waking up significantly easier to handle.

              Eventually, Pete caved into the smell of frying eggs and spices and begged Travie to make him an omelet, which he did with a fond grin. They kept it lighthearted through breakfast, not discussing the night before as they collapsed on the couch and watched the news with only passing interest while the topic of conversation drifted to romance and Travie talked about Katy with love dripping in his voice. Both Pete and Patrick remained uncomfortably silent until Travie changed the topic.

              “Think Gabe is still sleeping?” he asked doubtfully.

              “I can go check on him,” Patrick offered, and padded upstairs, his oversized hoodie wrapped around him like a blanket.

              “Man,” Travie said, watching him go, “I’d never say it to the guy’s face, but he’s pretty damn cute when he’s not all scary and focused.”

              “Tell me about it,” Pete muttered, and Travie raised one eyebrow at him.

              “Forget it,” he said firmly, and Travie nodded. Pete thought he might’ve looked suspicious, but then again, he could’ve imagined it.

              Before they could continue the conversation, Patrick stumbled back down the stairs, his face pinched up in concern.

              “Gabe is gone,” Patrick announced.

***

              Life rarely went the way Patrick expected it to. From the bigger things, like the existence of vampires and his band getting international fame to the smaller things, like Anna breaking up with him, he never stopped being surprised.

              Sometimes, he surprised himself. Patrick never thought he really wanted to try peyote, even after Gabe wouldn’t stop telling them about the “unforgettable” experience with the cobra and how it changed his life forever. Patrick was a rockstar, even if he didn’t look like it, and he’d tried his fair share of whatever was getting passed around in venues. Ultimately, he just didn’t like most of it. He liked whiskey and scotch and being drunk, as an abstract concept, but even the smell of most things that could be smoked made him sick to his stomach. So the sudden decision to join them was unexpected, but generally, kind of fun. He imagined that the feeling of oneness with the universe had been largely made up, but it had been true. Not overwhelming, but pleasant and peaceful. He felt relaxed, like his mind had had a long and relaxing massage.

              Actually, Patrick had been sort of hoping that he could do this with Gabe again, but given that he had disappeared, that conversation was going to have to be postponed.

              “When you say gone-?” Travie began.

              “I mean gone! He isn’t in his room, or any of the bedrooms, bathrooms, or closets, as far as I can find. I called out to him, he didn’t answer. All his shit is still there, cell phone and wallet included,” Patrick shrugged. “So fuck if I know.”

              “I saw something last night,” Pete said, eyes wide and scared. “I thought it was just a hallucination, but maybe… I don’t know, maybe it got him.”

              “What did you see?” Patrick asked.

              “Just shadows,” Pete said, “Shadows, everywhere where there should have been auras. And they were… alive. Moving.”

              “Look, that sounds like it probably was just a bad trip,” Travie said. “Calm down, alright? Gabe probably went off to go pet a dog or something. He’ll be fine.”

              Patrick didn’t feel completely convinced, but he didn’t argue it. But hours passed by, and they eventually started calling his other friends, none of whom had heard from him.

              Eventually, Travie had to go home, but even his usually calm nature seemed shaken.

              “You’ll call me right away if you hear anything, right?” he asked, and Patrick nodded.

              “The second we hear from him,” Patrick promised, letting his shoulders slump as soon as the door shut.

              “What if he’s in danger?” Pete asked.

              “There could be a completely reasonable explanation for this,” Patrick said, though he was still frowning. “And I mean, wouldn’t something more tangible than shadows kidnap him?”

              “Maybe!’ Pete threw his hands up in the air, exasperated. “Does it matter? Shadows or demons or vampires whatever took him took him because he was in my house, because he was my friend, because I just drag people down with me!”

              “Don’t be so full of yourself,” Patrick said, getting a tiny smirk in response. The last thing he needed was for Pete to have a meltdown while they were mid-crisis. “Let’s think about this. When did we last see him? When he went to bed?”

              “Actually,” Pete frowned. “I don’t remember actually seeing him go to bed. Do you?”

              Patrick thought about this, and his frown deepened as well. “No,” he admitted, “I just remember Travie saying he must’ve… how long does that mean he’s been missing?”

              “A hell of a lot longer than we thought,” Pete said, and reached for his phone right as it started ringing. Startled, he answered it.

              “Hello?” Pete asked, irritated, while Patrick stewed. He couldn’t think of anything bold enough to try and steal someone out of Pete’s home, but maybe Pete was right, and this was retribution for something, which would make Patrick just as guilty as Pete was.

              “No, you’ve gotta be kidding me, Dan,” Pete groaned. “Right now?”

              Patrick let out a low, frustrated moan as well. He was really not in the mood to get sent out on yet another magical reconnaissance mission, and it sounded like they were about to be.

              “What? Another one? How common can they possibly be?” Pete asked, sounding less annoyed and more perplexed. Patrick mouthed “ _What?_ ” to him, but Pete just shook his head.

              “Um, yeah, call Joe and Andy and we’ll go check it out,” Pete said. “Uh-huh. Bye.”

              “What?” Patrick asked immediately, and Pete made a face.

              “Basilisk sightings up on the North side. A couple of people in the industry have called in, and since we’ve dealt with a basilisk before…” he trailed off, looking pensieve.

              “I mean, I guess we should take care of it,” Patrick said, making a face. “But what about Gabe?”

              “What if it got Gabe?” Pete asked.

              “That isn’t at all what I meant,” Patrick said.

              “No, but what if?” Pete asked. “I mean, he was talking about snakes last night, so what if he went out to get closer to it and-” his voice cut off in pain, and Patrick pulled him into a hug, already shaking his head.

              “He’s not dead, okay?” Patrick said. “Let’s just go take care of the snake and then go back to trying to find Gabe, alright? This’ll probably be a hilarious Gabe story in a couple months.”

              “Oh, if he’s safe, I’m gonna kill him,” Pete vowed, and Patrick laughed, a little bleakly, but not bad for the circumstances.

              Joe was game to come over, but there was a slight hitch in the plans when they got to Andy.

              “I’m at home,” he said. “I literally just got back home days ago, and am trying to take a miniscule break before we have to jump through a thousand and one album release hoops, so no, I’m not coming out to kill a basilisk. Are there even any confirmed kills?”

              “Just sightings,” Patrick admitted. “And sort of weird ones, too. They say it’s an unusual color…”

              “It could be a fucking python escaped from the zoo!” Andy half shouted. “Look, I haven’t seen Carmilla in weeks, I’m jet lagged to all hell-”

              “There’s only a two-hour time difference!”

              “Patrick. I am not flying out to LA to kill a snake. I don’t even think we have good reason to believe this is a basilisk, and until you give me some concrete evidence, Joe can handle the physical stuff as well as I can.”

              Patrick sighed, having no decent rebuttal. “Tell Carm I said hi?”

              “I will,” Andy said, his tone softening. “She misses all her uncles too.”

              Patrick grinned into the phone. “Alright. I’ll call you later. Tell us if you hear anything about Gabe.”

              It felt weird, going on a mission with just the three of them, but the car was decidedly roomier when they left that evening.

              “Ah, growing up,” Joe mused as they sped down the highway. Joe was driving, and he looked like he’d been having a much better day than Pete and Patrick, who gave off the impression of being decidedly haggard. “When you’re a kid, you think the monsters in Hollywood are the predatory movie executives that partake in some pretty serious child abuse and write up shitty contracts, and then you get old and discover that LA is home to literal monsters. Feels kinda backwards, doesn’t it?”

              “Kinda makes you wonder why all the monsters are so attracted to LA,” Patrick said. Joe bit his lip, one eyebrow raising up behind his sunglasses as he took a sharp curve. The setting sun glinted off the shiny paint of the car, hurting Patrick’s eyes when he tried to look down or turn his face away from the wind. He was going to have to add a “no convertibles” rule to upcoming missions.

              “I’ve thought about that, actually,” Joe said. “I mean, when you think about it, I think it’s maybe just the whole entertainment industry, maybe all the arts. I mean, that’s what mythical creatures are always known for, aren’t they? Their relationship with arts. Maybe that’s why it’s so prevalent in the industry, and why most humans don’t know that magical creatures exist.”

              “Because, what, all the magical creatures are famous?” Patrick said, and Joe took one hand off the steering wheel, snapping his fingers and pointing at Patrick.

              “Exactly,” he said. “It’s not like everyone is surrounded by magic all the time and just oblivious to it. It’s just that magic attracts music and vice versa, so all the musicians…”

              “Get stuck with all the magic,” Patrick agreed, leaning back in his seat.

              “Granted, that only explains the humanoid shit, not so much basilisks, but,” Joe shrugged, taking a steep hill far too fast, “I think most humans just see what they want to see.”

              The sun had just crossed the horizon when they pulled up to the address of the most recent report of seeing the basilisk, a frighteningly huge estate with gates three times as tall as any of them, and a keypad at the entrance to it. None of them particularly wanted to go in and speak to the celebrity who had called it in, so instead, Joe slowed the car to a crawl in the neighborhood as they began looking all around for signs of a giant snake.

              “How do you think we’re gonna find this thing?” Pete asked, squinting as the light outside grew dimmer and dimmer. Patrick was having a hell of a time seeing anything, much less a camouflaged snake close to the ground, and he was pretty sure that the only member of his band that would have been useful there was Andy.

              “That’s a valid question,” Joe admitted, squinting slightly himself. “I might be able to see better if I changed, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is a good idea.”

              “Well, that’s just brilliant, isn’t it?” Pete said scathingly. Patrick winced, wishing there were some way to help his friend who was very obviously on edge.

              “We’re gonna find him,” Patrick said quietly, and Pete glared at him.

              “We could stop by some clubs while we’re out?” Joe suggested. “Any places out here that Gabe frequents?”

              “A few,” Pete said stiffly, not looking up. “But it’s not as though he’s going to stumble all the way across LA to go to a club with no phone, wallet, or keys.”

              “Just a thought,” Joe said, holding his hands up in defense. The car had slowed to a crawl, barely moving forward at all, and Patrick leaned back with a sigh.

              “It’s not as though he wandered off!” Pete continued, still fuming. “He had to have been taken by something, and don’t you dare say we can find him, because we have no fucking way of finding him until we know where he is or what’s taken him, and we don’t have any idea how to find out what the hell has taken him, so if you don’t have any useful suggestions-”

              “What about Ryan?” Patrick asked, tearing his eyes away from the inky black window as soon as he had the thought. Pete paused, so Patrick jumped on the opportunity to keep talking. “I mean, Ryan could probably see where he is, right?”

              “There’s an idea,” Joe said with a grin. “We’re all out together, so now sounds like as good a time as ever for a rescue mission, eh?”

              “Ryan,” Pete agreed, pressing his knuckles up against his eyes. “Jesus, I’m an idiot.”

              “Well, no change there,” Joe said cheerfully. “Patrick, why don’t you drive. I’ll get in the back and keep my eyes peeled for this basilisk, and Pete, you call our oracle friend.”

              “Fine by me,” Patrick said, switching places with Joe and adjusting all the mirrors self-consciously before he took off, meandering around the dark neighborhood roads back towards Pete’s house, unsure of where they were supposed to start, but assuming that was as good a place as ever.

              “Hey, Ryan!” Pete said, leaning closer to his window for better reception. “Yeah, no, I need your help. Where the hell is Gabe?”

              Patrick squinted into the darkness, trying not to listen to the conversation. He hated how dark residential neighborhoods were, and wished some of them would set up security lights or something. It was nearly impossible to see, and he really didn’t want to imagine what would happen if he were to run over Brad Pitt’s kid in the middle of the night.

              “Yeah, whatever, man, do your thing, I’ll be here,” Pete said, sounding disgruntled. He covered up the phone before saying “The weird trance thing.”

              Patrick shivered in remembrance. “Creepy.”

              “I turn into a wolf, and you think seeing the future is creepy?” Joe asked.

              “Kinda,” Patrick said, turning his attention back to the winding black road that appeared to unravel in front of him.

              “Jesus, you okay? Dude, what did you see?” Pete asked. Patrick turned just slightly to look at Pete, and the moment he did, he saw something glitter through the windshield, and the car hit something very solid with a loud crunch, sending it spinning out to the side of the road.

              Instinctively, Patrick slammed his hand across Pete’s chest as the spun, holding him back into his seat as the car skidded out of control. His head knocked painfully against the window, and his vision briefly went gray.

              “ _Are you okay? Pete?_ ” Patrick could distantly hear Ryan’s tinny voice coming through the cell phone speakers underneath the sound of Joe and Pete’s groans. Patrick blinked a few times, trying to get his vision to straighten out, and when he did, his stomach dropped. Caught in the bright yellow headlights was a very human sized lump sprawled in the middle of the road.

              “Oh, motherfucker,” Patrick whispered, his chest seizing up. His stomach roiled, and his skin felt very cold and hot at the same time as he fixated on the girl in the road.

              “Fuck, I have to call you back,” Pete yelled into the phone, hanging up and jumping out of the car. Patrick stayed frozen in place, his right hand hanging limply at his side and his left hand still gripping the steering wheel, white knuckled. He watched in a blank panic as Pete sprinted to the girl’s side and shook her. After a few endless, tense moments, Patrick watched as the girl stood shakily up, and his lungs flooded with air again.

              Patrick fumbled helplessly with his seatbelt for way too long before he could finally get it to release with a click, and he half ran, half stumbled over to the two of them.

              Upon getting a better look at the girl, she was rather attractive, if plain, and probably a little younger than him. She rubbed the back of her head, looking disoriented.

              “Holy shit, I’m so sorry, so fucking sorry, fuck!” Patrick gasped, skidding to the ground next to her. The girl looked up at Patrick, still disoriented.

              “Oh, uh, were you driving?” she asked, blinking blearily. “No, no, you’re fine, I was just- I shouldn’t have run across the road like that, it’s not your fault.”

              “Fuck that, I hit you!” Patrick gasped. “Jesus, let me drive you to the hospital!”

              “I really don’t think that’s necessary,” she said. “I feel fine, just a little shocked.”

              “That’s not possible,” Patrick said immediately. “I hit you going forty. I heard a crunch. You’re lucky to be alive.”

              “Seriously, I’m fine,” she said, giving Patrick a tense smile, and stretching out all her limbs. “See? No harm done.”

              “I still think I should take you to the hospital. You could have a concussion,” Patrick insisted, and she shook her head tightly.

              “Honestly, I feel fine,” she said. Patrick looked up at Pete, who nodded ever so slightly to confirm that she was telling the truth. Patrick frowned, but he helped the girl get to her feet. She looked like she was going out, in a skimpy glittering dress and high heels, and she shook out her hair and smiled at Patrick. There was barely any blood on the road.

              “Can I drive you home, at least?” Patrick asked.

              “Sure, that’d be great,” she said gratefully. She leaned a little on Patrick’s arm to get her balance, but soon straightened up and walked back to the car, only a little unsteady.

              “Are you sure we should pick up a stranger…?” Pete asked, and Patrick huffed, gesturing wildly towards the car.

              “I ran her over!” he said. “I think that giving her a ride home is the absolute least I can do, don’t you?”

              “Okay, look, I feel bad for the girl, but have you noticed that every time we run into a pretty girl that just wants a perfectly normal favor, she is always trying to kill us?” Pete asked.

              “If she is anything, we’ve got Joe with us, and we’re just dropping her off,” Patrick said.

              “Why isn’t she bleeding?” Pete pleaded.

              “Maybe I didn’t hit her that hard,” Patrick said, but his own story felt flimsy, even as he looked at the girl and Joe hitting it off in the backseat, talking animatedly. “Okay, maybe you’re right. But what am I supposed to say? Sorry miss, I think you might be a succubus intent on sucking my life force out through my dick, you’re just gonna have to walk home with a concussion?”

              “You’ve got a point,” Pete admitted grudgingly. “But if this goes bad, I’ve got the right to say ‘I told you so’.”

              “Fine,” Patrick said, and he walked back over to the front seat, giving the girl a look that was both concerned and suspicious through the mirror.

              “Where do you live?” he asked her. She leaned forward with a curious smile on her face.

              “It’s kind of out of the way,” she said, listing an address he had never heard of. “But I can give you directions.”

***

              Joe was doing his best to keep Pete and Patrick sane, though it was no easy job. He could feel Pete’s tenseness growing through the pack bond all day, and even after a small car accident, he was still mostly focused on the fate of Gabe. Patrick, meanwhile, was obviously not taking too well to nearly committing manslaughter, so later, Joe would blame his inability to spot something wrong on his preoccupation. Even to himself, it didn’t sound like a good excuse.

              “Turn right here! No, I mean, turn left _right here_!” she laughed, pointing a finger in front of Patrick’s face before collapsing back and turning to smile at Joe.

              “Say, have I seen you guys before? You look familiar. You go to many parties up in that neighborhood?” she asked, jerking her thumb back towards where they came from.

              “We’re in a band,” Joe said, amused.

              “That’s cool,” she said, sounding somewhat bored. “Are you famous?”

              “We’re Fall Out Boy,” Joe said, and she shrugged. “Kinda famous, yeah. Not A-list, but up there.”

              “That’s cool,” she said. “I imagine being like, super famous would be exhausting, don’t you?”

              “Yeah, being mildly famous is already exhausting,” Joe said with a stiff laugh. It was difficult to talk normally when he could still feel Pete and Patrick’s tenseness, like he was tied to them with too tight guitar strings.

              “Where are we going, anyway?” Patrick asked, the nervousness audible in his voice.

              “Waaaaay out on the northwest side,” she said, and made a face. “I’m sorry. You really don’t have to take me all the way home.”

              “No, it’s fine, we’re close to there too,” Patrick said.

              “That’s great!” she said, sounding like she sincerely meant it.

              In spite of the fact that Joe knew they had to be getting closer to Pete’s neighborhood, he didn’t recognize the name of the street they were on, or the ones they were passing. Furthermore, when he looked out the window, he couldn’t help but notice that there were no longer any houses around.

              “You live in the middle of nowhere?” he asked, and she shrugged.

              “My mom and dad don’t really like visitors. Usually we live on a farm, but here we just have a small fruit grove out in the back,” she said. Then she let out a shudder, and rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

              “You okay?” Joe asked, and she nodded.

              “It’s just cold,” she said, shivering again.

              “Here,” he said, shrugging his hoodie off and draping it around her shoulders. She smiled up at him, her eyes fixating on him in a way that felt a little unnatural.

              “So if your family doesn’t like visitors, why do you live in LA?” Joe asked, and she shrugged.

              “Well, I guess I misspoke. My parents are usually pretty happy for visitors, but they also like keeping to themselves. I bring people home to meet them sometimes, but they don’t want to have to deal with neighbors all the time.”

              “Well, I guess LA is pretty good for that,” Joe snorted. “Pete, do you even know your neighbors’ names?”

              Pete, who apparently wasn’t listening, didn’t answer, and Joe made a slightly pained face as he apologized to the girl.

              “He’s a little preoccupied today,” Joe said, and she smiled.

              “It’s fine, really,” she insisted. Then: “Oh, turn here!”

              Joe knew, beyond all doubt, that they couldn’t be far from the center of LA, but this street was surrounded by nothing but desert. An increasingly louder voice in the back of his head was telling him that something was seriously wrong.

              “Land getting developed out here?” Joe asked.

              “Something like that,” she smiled. She leaned up to Patrick and said “First house on the left. The light should be on.”

              “I doubt I’ll miss it,” Patrick muttered, his expression plainly worried. Even though Joe had to admit that it was eerie, Patrick worried too much. He was going to go prematurely gray.

              “Hey, by the way,” Joe said to Pete, leaning forward in his seat, “Did Ryan see anything to do with Gabe earlier?”

              “Shit, I never called him back, and he was about to tell me!” Pete said, fumbling in his pocket as he tried to dig his phone back out. “And he had seen something, shit, I hope it wasn’t important.”

              Pete finally managed to wrestle his phone out of the pocket of his too tight jeans, only to make a distressed noise when he opened it.

              “No service?” Joe asked.

              “Motherfucking-!” Pete trailed off into a string of nearly incomprehensible curse words.

              “Hey, it’s okay, we’ll call him as soon as we get out of here,” Joe said, trying to calm Pete down.

              “Okay,” Pete said, turning to face out the window and still looking nervous.

              “Is this the place?” Patrick asked, turning to face the girl. But he pulled back in confusion, and when Joe turned to look at her, there was nothing next to him but an empty seat.

              “Um,” Patrick said. “Where did she go?”

              “I don’t know!” Joe cried, running a hand through his hair. “She was right here just a second ago!”

              He looked up through the window, and sure enough, there was a small but decent looking house with a porchlight on, but no sign of the girl. Patrick had just stopped, so there was no chance she could have gotten inside that fast, none that Joe could think of.

              “Should I go… see if she made it inside?” Patrick asked, still staring at the empty seat in confusion.

              “I mean,” Joe made a face. “I kinda want my jacket back, so we probably should.”

              “Priorities,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes, “But okay, let’s go ask.”

              The three of them got out of the car, and Joe was stunned by how absurdly silent the night was. He couldn’t even hear crickets chirping, or the sounds of distant cars. Nothing but the quiet hum of electricity in the porchlight as they walked closer.

              The three of them were halfway up the path to the house when Pete stopped in his tracks, frowning.

              “No way…” he muttered, turning back to the car, and then to the house again. “Hold on. I think that… this is like Travie’s goddamn vanishing hitchhiker story!”

              Joe gave Pete a questioning look, and Pete continued.

              “You know the old ghost story? A girl is hitchhiking, she gets picked up, and then disappears, only to turn out that she’s been dead the whole time? Travie said that exact thing happened to him a few days ago, and I hadn’t believed it, but what if that’s what happened here?”

              “Hey, if all we get out of this is that she’s been dead the whole time, that’ll be a pretty normal day by our standards,” Joe joked, and crossed the rest of the distance up to the front door and knocked twice.

              Only a few moments had passed before an elderly woman opened the door, with the girl from the car behind her, still wearing Joe’s jacket.

              “Mama, I brought you some visitors,” the girl said, and the woman smiled wearily, beckoning them inside.

              “You know, thank you ma’am, but we really ought to be going,” Joe said, but the woman shook her head.

              “No, you brought my daughter home, I insist you stay and rest for a moment,” she said, smiling again. Joe felt a little unnerved by her smile. Though all her skin was faded and wrinkled, her teeth looked young, somehow. Young and white and completely unaffected by time.

              Something was very wrong. All the lights in the house were out, save for one lone lamp on an end table by the couch, and it was still far too quiet. Joe turned around to see Pete and Patrick looking just as nervous behind him, and the front door shut. Joe wasn’t sure what kind of monsters they were up against, but he had to say something.

              “So, not to be rude, but aren’t you supposed to be dead?” he asked the girl. He held his breath as her gaze fixed on him, and her smile slowly faded.

              “Oh, sweetie,” she sighed. “No, not for you. I’m the bait for everyone, but I only stick around if you’re found guilty.”

              “Have a seat,” the older woman said again, her smile too wide, teeth too sharp, “I insist.”

              No sooner had the words left her mouth than something thick and dark and not quite solid blew out from underneath the couch, wrapping around Joe’s legs like a thick vine. It was icy cold and almost moist feeling as it yanked his legs out from underneath him and all but threw him down onto the couch, alongside Pete and Patrick.

More tendrils of icy black shadow sprung from the couch, wrapping around Joe and his friends’ wrists and ankles, holding him in place at an angle on the couch, pulling at his back as he tried to force himself into a better position.

“What are you?” Joe demanded, tilting his chin up and trying to infuse some as his trademark alpha courage into his voice.

              “We are ancient,” the girl and the woman said together, “We are timeless, we are hungry, we are punishers of evil men.”

              “Well, then prepare to go hungry, because we’re not evil men!” Joe said, still tugging fruitlessly at the shadows wrapped tightly around his limbs. As he tugged, they tugged back tighter, cutting off circulation in his hands and feet with a hissing noise, and he had to bite his lip to keep from gasping.

              “Innocent men do not have blood on their hands,” they said in unison again. The edges between where the two of them were blurring like bad static, hurting his eyes to try and look at them separately.

              “I wash my hands all the goddamn time,” Joe growled in desperate sarcasm, “What are you talking about?”

              “All of you have taken a life. You are not innocent, and you are ours to claim,” they said, their voice getting stronger, like there were far more than two people speaking. Joe couldn’t stand to look at the blurring, melding form that was shifting in front of him, and he looked away when he spoke.

              “I think a lot of that was self-defense,” he said. He tried to take a deep breath, only to be overwhelmed with the smell of smoke, a choked out fire, but somehow still a wet smell, like a fire had been put out by having water dumped over it.

              “We care not for the nuances of the crime. You are murderers,” they said.

              “Any ideas here?” Patrick asked under his breath, and the creature in front of them laughed, its laughter echoing and undulating as it shifted from sound to solid, a mass of pulsating blackness in front of them where two women had stood seconds ago.

              “Oh!” Pete squeaked, and a roar escaped the mass of black, so loud and powerful that the force of it knocked Joe’s head backwards, and his vision was overwhelmed by the darkness, his ears muffled with silence.

              By the time Joe’s senses returned to comprehension again, he was in the same living room, but looking at it from upside down. His head felt much heavier, and when he tried to move his arms, they were pinned to his sides with a force like iron.

              Joe twisted his head, trying to make sense of the situation, which was much easier to understand when he saw Pete and Patrick pinned up to the ceiling near him with what looked like thick spider webs made entirely out of tar. Patrick’s hat had fallen off, and his glasses were hanging dangerously near to the top of the bridge of his nose, and Pete’s hair was coated in the strange, tar-like substance. Neither of them seemed to be awake yet.

              Joe twisted his shoulders, trying to find some purchase in his trappings, but he was stuck fast, and he couldn’t figure out how to escape. His heart was accelerating, but he slammed his eyes shut, trying to force his head into focusing. Escape. All he had to worry about was escape.

              “Hello?” he croaked out, the word pathetically quiet, his throat too dry and tacky to give himself much volume. Then again, they were in the middle of nowhere, and quite possibly another dimension for all Joe knew, so he doubted how much calling for help would actually do.

              Thankfully, no one answered, so maybe the creature wasn’t there. Not that its absence or presence was changing much at the moment, if Joe could figure out a way to escape, it would be much harder to get past the room if it was still there.

              His head was the only thing that seemed to be even remotely loose, and he used this to his advantage so he could slam it into the ceiling in frustration. He needed to think, not panic, but his pulse hadn’t seemed to get the memo, and he wasn’t coming up with anything.

              It was Andy who kept his cool in a crisis, Andy who could figure out a way for all of them to get out. Hell, Andy could probably tell Joe how to get out on his own.

              Actually, maybe he already had.

              A distant echo of Andy demanding to know if Joe was a werewolf or not echoed in his head, and Joe’s eyes widened as he remembered the last time he had been trapped like this. He pushed all the panic into the center of his body, a red hot ball of power, and focused around it. One moment of focus was all it took, and Joe’s body was folding in on itself, shrinking and snapping until he was a wolf.

              The web seemed to have mostly hardened, and though pieces of it stuck to his fur, the casings now hung limply from the ceiling, with Joe crouched inside it, all his fur on end. The ground looked very far below him, but he ripped his clothes away from the sticky trappings and threw them to the floor with his teeth. He then leapt to the floor, shifting back to his human form midway and landing on the balls of his feet, trying to absorb the noise as best he could.

              He held his crouched position for just a second before redressing and scanning the room as fast as he could, looking for something sharp he could cut Pete and Patrick down with. But aside from the black webbing on the ceiling, the living room looked like a furniture store display of someone’s living room, with nothing personal in it, nothing in it at all save for a few old couches, an end table, a dim orange lamp, and a small television in the corner.

              “Okay, okay, come on,” Joe muttered to himself. He grabbed the end table and dragged it across the floor so that it was directly beneath Patrick. “Let’s get fancy,” he said, standing up on top of the table, and focusing all of his transformation energy into his right hand. To his relief, the maneuver worked, and he ended up with one wolf claw on the end of his human arm. The grafting between his human and animal bones ached, but he began to tear at the webbing holding Patrick up. It was thick, and the tearing was slow work, but after a few minutes of scratching, a few of the smaller strands had snapped, and he was still scratching.

              When he had Patrick nearly half removed from his bindings, Joe heard a low hissing coming from behind him. He froze in fear, overwhelmed with the fear that it had come back, and he turned around slowly, his hands still twitching as he turned to look.

              Instead of seeing the pulsing shadow creature, however, the hissing seemed to have come from a large, dark snake coiled up on the floor. It stuck out its forked tongue and hissed again, and Joe made a face.

              “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said, but even as he began to lament having escaped the shadow creature to die at the hands of a basilisk, he realized that he wasn’t dead. He could see the snake’s brilliant yellow eyes, but it merely hissed at him again, and blinked at him slowly. If it had been a basilisk, he should have been dead, he knew. And yet, this snake was enormous, the size of a boa constrictor at least. It also appeared to have a slightly hooded head, which didn’t match the descriptions of any exotic snake Joe could think of, much less anything native to California.

              “Can I help you?” Joe whispered at last, trying to prevent himself from dissolving into hysterics at the absurdity of the situation. Even more surprising, the snake shook its head, and coiled tighter, its eyes still trained on Joe.

              Deciding that he still had precious little time, Joe unwillingly looked away from the snake, going back to tearing the strings away from Patrick. Another minute of digging at them with his claws, and Patrick fell free, Joe managing to catch him before he hit the ground and setting him down on the couch. He dragged the table over a few feet, climbed back on top of it, and began sawing at Pete’s bindings.

              A few minutes in, the snake behind him let out an extremely loud hissing, spitting noise, and Joe turned to see the strange conglomerate of the young girl and the old woman slog through the doorway, its footsteps uneven with one leg much longer than the other.

              “Fuck,” Joe whispered, and began tearing at Pete’s bindings faster, harder, desperate to rip them apart.

              “What do you think you’re doing?” it asked, both of its voices sounding amused.

              Joe opened and closed his mouth a few times before he managed a weak laugh. “Would you believe me if I said I was looking for the bathroom?”

              Pitch black smoke began swirling around the mismatched feet of the creature, getting more and more substantial as it swirled, turning into something solid and ropelike again.

              Watching it take form again, Joe felt overwhelmed with the knowledge that he was going to die. It felt inevitable in that moment, there could be no escape, and he closed his eyes waiting for one of the shadows the pierce through his chest.

              Instead of feeling pain, though, he heard a shrill scream, and he opened his eyes to see the thing covering its face with its mismatched hands, crying as it stumbled backwards. The snake was facing the creature, standing between it and Joe, and it reeled back, spitting venom again and making the creature wail as it splattered its skin.

              The snake turned its head to Joe and hissed loudly as it to tell him to hurry up. Needing no more prompting, Joe tore the last of the bindings away from Pete, ripping one of his claws in half in the process. Pete and Patrick were just then starting to wake up, blinking groggily as Joe tugged them both to their feet, sprinting towards the door.

              “Are you coming?” he screamed at the snake from the door, and it slithered after him hurriedly. He slammed the door shut after it, and piled the four of them up in his car, pressing the gas pedal to the floor as he sped away from the tiny house.

              In the middle of the country, Joe was hopelessly lost, but within twenty minutes or so, he began seeing houses and lights again, and soon after that, he found a street name he recognized, and began making his way back towards Pete’s house, his chest beginning to loosen.

              As Joe began calming down, trying to push his memories of the last few hours back into the space where a nightmare might have belonged, he heard Patrick speaking in a low voice.

              “You saved us back there, huh?” he said, and Joe caught sight of him in the mirror, running one finger down the snake’s hooded head. “Thanks for that. We owe you one.”

              The snake hissed in response, and Patrick screamed “Holy SHIT!”

              “What, what?” Joe yelled, swerving slightly before he got control of the car again.

              “Did you hear that?” Patrick demanded.

              “Hear what?” Pete yelled.

              “Yes, I can hear you!” Patrick said, and he focused intensely on the snake. “Can they not?”

              “Patrick? You’re acting really freaky and that doesn’t sound anything like parselmouth,” Pete said, eyes wide. “What the fuck?”

              Patrick shook his head, holding out a finger to silence Pete while he stared into the snake’s eyes, nodding occasionally for a minute. After a while of this, he laughed nervously, facing Pete and Joe again.

              “Um, guys? This is Gabe.”

***

              Andy came home from grocery shopping to find Fuck City headquarters in a state of complete chaos. Matt was collapsed on the floor with laughter, there was finger paint all over the carpet, and Carmilla’s mouth was stained red all over.

              “Dada!” she screeched as he walked in the door, toddling over to Andy and throwing her arms around his knees. Andy picked her up with a chuckle, bouncing her in his arms while he turned to look at Matt, who appeared to be soaking wet, and was sporting an impressive amount of macaroni stuck in his hair. Andy said nothing, but as soon as Matt met his gaze, he fell apart with laughter again, barely able to breathe.

              “What’s been going on here, munchkin?” Andy asked Carmilla, and she laughed, burying her face in his neck, nuzzling with her mouth a little too close to his jugular vein for comfort.

              “You thirsty?” he asked, and she nodded eagerly.

              “I got Bat all wet,” she declared, nodding at Matt, who was soaking the living room carpet as he lay there.

              “I can see that,” Andy agreed. “Did he deserve it?”

              “He got messy and needed a bath,” Carmilla said, and squealed in happiness when Andy handed her an unmarked juicebox, sinking her teeth into the top of it and forgoing a straw to suck the blood out of it in what was, to her, a much more natural way.

              “Can’t argue with that logic,” Andy said, snorting at Matt, who was still wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. He turned his attention back to Carmilla when she tugged on his shirtsleeve, and he picked her up again, cradling her up against his chest. “How are you doing, Carm?”

              “I missed you,” she whined, her tiny hands wrapped up in his hair and refusing to let go.

              “I missed you too,” Andy laughed. “I was only at the store for an hour, though.”

              Carmilla shook her head against his neck. “I miss you all the time,” she said, sounding sad, and Andy winced.

              “I miss you too, baby,” he said, rubbing soothing circles into her back. “Life can get almost boring without you.”

              Carmilla didn’t respond this time, instead snuggling closer to her father until her breathing began to level out, steadying as he held her, their heartbeats lining up.

              A slightly calmer Matt walked over to Andy, shaking his head.

              “She’s pretty sweet. For a kid,” Matt said, as though he wasn’t every bit as adoring of Carmilla as every other person that set their eyes on her.

              “She’s the best,” Andy sighed, long past fighting to keep the love out of his voice. Matt gave him a knowing look, and Andy carried Carmilla across the house, keeping his walking as level as possible so as not to wake her up. He laid her down in her crib, brushing bright red ringlets off her forehead and pressing a kiss onto her forehead. He probably could have watched his child sleep for hours, but at that moment, his phone began to ring shrilly, and he dashed out of the room to answer it.

              “What now?” Andy sighed.

              “Can you come out to LA?” Joe asked. Andy sighed for nearly twenty seconds straight before responding.

              “I already told Patrick: I am not flying out across the country and leaving my daughter behind for some wild goose chase- no, wild basilisk chase-”

              “We may have accidentally stumbled into the trap of an eldritch monster and then gotten saved by a magical snake that we think might actually be Gabe, transformed.”

              A beat of silence followed. Andy sighed again.

              “I’ll go book some tickets.”

              “Tickets? Plural?”

              Andy cast a look back at the closed bedroom door.

              “Obviously I’m bringing my daughter with me.”

              Andy and Carmilla were on a plane by six the next morning, a fact that Carmilla was decidedly unhappy about, but she smiled grudgingly when Andy reminded her she was going to go and see her uncles. She was bouncing up and down in her rented car seat by the time they pulled up in front of Pete’s house, and she ran straight into Patrick’s arms when he opened the door to greet them.

              “Guess I missed all the fun, didn’t I?” Andy said, sitting down on the couch in the living room. Sure enough, there was an enormous, bright purple snake curled up on Pete’s rug. “So, er, why do you think that snake is Gabe? Aside from the obvious?”

              “You ready for shit to get weird?” Joe asked. “Because we’ve got a hell of a story for you.”

              Pete, Patrick, and Joe recounted the past days quickly, and Andy felt a swell of guilt as he heard the story of the vanishing hitchhiker’s trap. They could’ve escaped so much faster had he been there, but he didn’t have much time to pity himself, as soon the subject turned to the snake and Patrick’s strange understanding of it.

              “So, Patrick starts talking to the damn snake, and at first I think he’s just snapped,” Joe said animatedly, “But when Pete called Ryan back, Ryan said he kept seeing this weird purple snake whenever he was trying to see Gabe. He looked it up and found some old legend called an _encantado_ , which is kind of a weresnake? Apparently it’s a weresnake from South America, one that has, guess fucking what, an affinity for sex, parties, and music. And shit, Patrick’s not lying, he’s really talking to Gabe, somehow. Apparently this happened the last time he took peyote too, but that time he turned back as soon as he sobered up. Now he, uh, isn’t quite sure how to turn back, but it’s Gabe, and he’s alive. Kind of stuck as a snake, but alive,” Joe said, giving the snake a sympathetic smile.

              The snake, no, Gabe, hissed sadly, its forked tongue flicking out of its mouth and back in. Andy blinked a few times, but the image didn’t go away.

              “Have you considered getting the snake so high he turns back into a person?” Andy asked.

              “Well, we would, but my list of people who can hook me up with peyote begins and ends with someone who currently can’t speak a human language,” Joe said.

              “There are some spells that we think might work, but we don’t want to fuck up and get him stuck like this forever, so…” Pete looked disappointed in himself, and Andy nodded like this was a perfectly normal problem.

              “And you couldn’t have me try and help you figure all of this out over the phone?” Andy asked. Joe and Pete gave him skeptical looks, and Andy shrugged.

              “Have you considered that the best place to start is someone that’s already a shapeshifter?” he asked, pointedly glancing at Joe.

              “I don’t know what to tell him!” Joe cried, throwing his hands up. “You just sort of, focus your energy inward and, you know, bam!” he said, shrugging.

              “How articulate,” Andy said. The serious of the entire situation was somewhat muffled by the playful laughter of Patrick and Carmilla, playing some kind of game just behind Pete’s sofa.

              “Anything else? Anything you can think of?” Pete pleaded. Andy looked at the snake, looking so painfully sad, and he sat down next to him on the floor, looking him in the eyes.

              “You said you sort of meditate, right?” Andy said doubtfully. The snake nodded at him, and Andy resisted the urge to shudder.

              “You don’t need drugs to do that,” Andy said, “Just close your eyes and focus like you usually would, only instead of focusing on the snake, focus on being human.”

              The snake closed his eyes, but there was no change, and Andy sighed, moving onto the couch and collapsing backwards.

              “So, the vanishing hitchhiker?” he said wearily. “What are we gonna do about it?”

              “I don’t think we can do anything about it,” Joe said with a frown. “I tried to go back once the sun rose, but I drove around for hours and couldn’t find the place. I think you can only find it when she’s giving you directions or something.

              “So there’s no plan?” Andy asked.

              “None that I can think of,” Joe said. “It’s not as though we’re the monster police. This one is way too powerful for us. I say we count ourselves lucky to be alive and let it keep doing what it’s doing. There probably aren’t too many good guy murderers, so maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world?”

              “I don’t like it,” Andy said.

              “Neither do I,” Joe admitted. “But it was ancient, and it was so powerful. There are gonna be things that are just… out of our control.”

              Andy pondered that for a moment. On the one hand, he didn’t see what they could do about it. But on the other, if it was just going to keep killing, they could make an effort to find it. Whatever it was.

              His reverie was interrupted by a sudden eruption of motion coming from the floor, followed by Gabe, very human again, swearing up a storm.

              Pete let out a wordless cry and threw his arms around Gabe, tackling him back to the ground in a hug. Gabe shook his head, running his hands through his hair and down his arms and all over himself as though to make sure he was still real.

              “Thanks,” he said to Andy after a minute. “Um, that was helpful.”

              “Anytime,” Andy said, laughing lightly. “Guess you’re part of the magical creature squad, now.”

              Gabe didn’t look particularly excited about the prospect.

             

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of an author's note last chapter, I had some formatting issues, but welcome back to the high way to hell! I'm so excited to be working on the third season of this, and even more excited and disbelieving that all of you are still reading and enjoying it! This chapter was inspired by my folklore class's discussion of the disappearing hitchhiker story, and a little bit by The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Nothing has changed, but for those of you just tuning in, you can find updates and extra content for The High Way to Hell at thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com. Special thanks to my new beta, Mani, who is absolutely amazing and puts up with my overzealous use of commas to make this a bit more readable for the rest of you. Lastly, a huge thanks to all of you. Without all of your comments and support, I probably would have given up this story long ago.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Chapter title by Rob Zombie


	3. Superstition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy wants to go on a camping trip. Pete wants to get Patrick laid. Joe just wants to sleep in a real bed. Unfortunately for them, camping trips in the magical world are not to be taken lightly. Who knows what could be in the forest on a cold winter's night?

For as long as he could remember, Andy loved going camping. His father had taken him all the way up to Escanaba Forest when he was very young. After he died, Andy missed the woods so much that his mother signed him up for as many camping trips as she could through the school and boy scouts so long as she didn’t have to chaperone, as the inability to go out in the sun might hinder a camping trip.

Once Andy got older, he went off on long weekends camping with friends on his own. His mom was really lax about letting him go off and do things independently, so he was pretty used to taking care of himself. He could pitch a tent in five minutes flat, knew how to build an impressive and long lasting fire, and had recently discovered that a veggie burger cooked just as well as beef when wrapped in tin foil with potatoes and left over the coals of the fire to cook.

              Andy had been excited to go on a gigantic Fuck City camping trip, leaving Carmilla at his mom’s house a week in advance. When Matt started to get sick, he was immediately on the ball, and called Joe to even out the numbers. Joe was initially unconvinced.

              “Dude, it’s November,” Joe had complained. “Like, the tail end of November. This is the best time of year to stay inside and start buying Hanukkah presents and avoid the dark, cold, scary woods at all costs. Do you know how much sleeping on the frozen ground would suck on my back?”

              “You can bring an air mattress,” Andy pleaded, “And come on, the cold doesn’t bug you that much; you’re a werewolf!”

              “Don’t you have a daughter to bond with?” Joe snipped.

              “There are some badass waterfalls near where we’re staying!”

              “Ugh! Do you hear yourself when you speak? ‘Badass waterfalls’?!”

              “So you’re coming?”

              “I can’t think of a good excuse.”

              It was shaping up to be a pretty fun weekend, but then the others started getting sick too. It looked like Andy had gotten Carmilla out of the house just in time, as Fuck City got swept up in a nasty stomach flu that didn’t seem to be getting to Andy. Refusing to let his spirits be dampened, he invited Pete and Patrick. In truth, he had sort of been expecting them to say no and planned on calling someone else, but to his shock, Pete agreed for both of them instantly. Andy was suspicious at once, with good reason.

              When the time came for them to take off in Andy’s Range Rover that could easily handle the off-road driving needed, he answered the door expecting Pete and Patrick, and Patrick instantly gave him an apologetic look, explained when Andy looked past him to see Pete and three girls waiting in a shiny car idling in his driveway.

              “Why?” he sighed.

              “Pete,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. “He’s rented a cabin, too, just warning you.”

              Andy felt a muscle twitch behind his eye. “That isn’t how camping works: does he know that?”

              “In defense of the cabin, I might point out that you’re a vampire and have terrible judgement of what elements are harmful, and I’m just the human that keeps getting hypothermia when we go on adventures,” Patrick said. “I was not going to fight the cabin with the fireplace. I did fight the bringing of strange extra people. But he’s Pete. I could only do so much.”

              “Thanks for trying,” Andy said sourly. Patrick patted him on the back and grabbed one of his bags, then sighed in resignation before getting back in the car with Pete.

              Andy fumed for the whole drive, but Joe’s spirits seemed to have risen considerably. Maybe everyone else liked the idea of a cabin, but that wasn’t the point of camping. They were supposed to be on the precipice of nature, separated by nothing but the fragile canvas tent. A cabin in the woods felt more like a cozy retreat.

              “You could pitch the tent next to the cabin,” Joe suggested, biting back a grin. Andy didn’t really see the humor in the situation. Still, he decided that going to the woods in any way was better than nothing, so he ground his teeth and let it be.

              When they hit the last town before the campsite, Andy pulled over at a Walmart, eyeing the storm clouds with slight trepidation. Maybe the cabin was a better idea than he had initially thought, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to say that when Pete pulled up next to him.

              “You rented a cabin,” Andy said, his voice venomous. He felt a little offended that Pete didn’t even flinch.

              “Dude, it’s gonna snow. I don’t want any Donner party bullshit going down,” he said, thoroughly unabashed.

              “You rented a cabin and brought extra people,” Andy said.

              “Right!” Pete perked up. “I haven’t introduced you yet! Andy, you remember Victoria, right?”

              “I think we met briefly?” Victoria said, one eyebrow raised, her eyes darting to Joe and back in a covert signal, clearly not wanting to say more in present company. She looked razor sharp, and somewhat intimidating. Andy nodded in acknowledgement, and thought that she looked at him with something like speculation, but he may have let his ego get away from him.

              “And this is Greta,” Pete continued, gesturing to a girl who looked like she was still in high school with pretty blonde curls. “She created The Hush Sound, the new band on the label I was telling you about?”

              “Pleasure,” Andy lied through his teeth, shaking Greta’s hand. She smiled a shy smile at him, and Pete turned to the last girl.

              “And this,” he said, his expression smug enough to indicate that she needed no introduction, “Is Ashlee Simpson.”

              Andy pressed his lips together and did his best to keep his face straight as he shook the girl’s hand stiffly. She was stunningly beautiful and didn’t strike him as abnormal, but with her reputation preceding her, it was all Andy could do to look as normal as possible and keep his scrutiny under wraps.

              “Nice to meet you,” she said, and the look she was giving him made it seem like she was doing her best not to be judgmental as well. Maybe, Andy thought, he would take up Joe’s idea and just set up camp nearby the cabin. It looked like it was going to be crowded.

              “I figured we could get some supplies here,” Andy said, turning back to Pete and shoving his anger deeper down in his chest.

              “Sounds great!” Pete said cheerfully. “The cabin has a fireplace, so I can cover wood and stuff if you want to get food.”

              Andy bit down. Buying firewood? What was the point of going camping in the first place? But he swallowed his pride and walked ahead of Pete, yanking a cart out of line with unnecessary force. A distant rumbling came from the sky as he walked inside, just a little too fast to be a comfortable human walking pace. Joe caught up to him quickly.

              “So,” Joe said, falling into step with Andy, his face full of chagrin, “They seem, uh, nice.”

              “He can’t be serious,” Andy said, shaking his head. Joe made a face.

              “Assuming you don’t mean Victoria, are we talking about jailbait or lip synced on SNL?” he asked.

              “Lip sync, although if he thinks he can get away with dating someone underage right now, he’s sorely mistaken,” Andy said darkly. To his surprise, Joe snorted.

              “I don’t think they’re here for him, at least not all of them,” he said. Andy turned to stare at Joe, not slowing down as they ploughed through the aisles, Andy’s hand jerking out sporadically to throw something into the cart.

              “What does that mean?” he asked.

              “I guess it’s not obvious if you’re not in his head,” Joe rolled his eyes, “He’s trying to hook Patrick up, so he brought a selection.” The disdain in Joe’s voice was dripping as he spoke. “And he’d better hope that Patrick doesn’t figure it out, or he’ll be in huge trouble.”

              Andy froze, his hand clenched around a bag of pretzels, eyes wide as he stared at Joe.

              “Come on,” he pleaded, “Pete’s not that dumb.”

              “Pete is exactly that dumb,” Joe said.

              “Jessica Simpson’s little sister?” Andy hissed. “A high school girl, the scariest girl on the planet who is also a foot taller than Patrick, and Jessica Simpson’s little sister? Has he ever met Patrick? In his life?”

              “Well, we can guarantee that Ashlee knows what tuna is, after everything that happened with her sister,” Joe said, barely holding back laughter.

              “Oh, don’t laugh,” Andy pleaded, “It won’t be funny when Patrick kills him in the middle of the woods and we’re the only witnesses.”

              “Hey, maybe it’ll work against the odds,” Joe said. “In any case, the weekend got a lot more interesting.”

              “That’s one word for it,” Andy said.

              “Hey, Andy?” Patrick appeared seemingly out of thin air when they turned into the next aisle, effectively cutting off their conversation. “What do vegans eat when they go fake camping?”

              “MorningStar and potatoes, same as when they go real camping,” Andy said sourly. “And if the girls want real meat or marshmallows or something, they can buy it their damn selves.”

              “I’ll pass along the message,” Patrick sighed, looking disappointed and resigned to have to deal with the strangers.

              “The real question,” Joe said quietly, “Is how Pete got all three of them to agree to this.”

              “Well, I guess we’ve got lots of time to figure it out,” Andy said.

              Pete had to lead the way up to the cabin, in the opposite section of the campsite that Andy was used to for camping. Snow was swirling around them as they pulled up, and Ashlee shivered theatrically when she got out of the car.

              Andy cheered up infinitesimally when he saw the cabin. It was old and wooden and dilapidated looking, as though no one had stayed there in a long time. It was sure to be cold inside, and honestly, the sky was dark and low enough that he had to admit that a tent would not have been good for the humans in this weather.

              “Nice place, huh?” Pete asked proudly.

              “It looks, uh, sturdy,” Greta said.

              “Assuming no wolves start huffing and puffing,” Victoria said, casting a quick grin to Joe. Andy smirked, stifling laughter.

              Patrick led the way in, his face still resigned looking, and he pushed open the sticky door with no hesitation.

              Inside, the cabin was eerie. Pitch dark compared to the already darkening outside, and then only lit with the blue glow of half a dozen cell phone screens shining around the room. The windows were too dirty to let in the dim light, and it looked like the vast majority of the cabin was just one big room, with unnatural shadows on the walls. Andy ran back out to his car and fished a couple of flashlights from the camping bag that he had thought would be useless, and passed them out to see the cabin properly.

              Once visible, it was even worse looking, with cobwebs in the corners and a thick layer of dust on the floor. The unnatural shadows were revealed to be poorly taxidermized animals, with the entire front half of a grizzly bear above the fireplace looking like it was springing to attack. Andy shuddered at the sight, and turned to Pete disbelieving. Pete, for his part, looked delighted.

              “Not too far off from a ‘real’ camping experience, huh?” he asked.

              “Not that far at all,” Andy agreed, wrapping his arms around his chest. Ashlee was shaking so hard that it looked like a strong breeze might knock her over, and Patrick was starting to shiver even in his heavy coat. He eyed the humans uneasily. “Maybe we should go get some of that firewood you picked up.”

              Pete nodded, looking uncomfortably cold as well, even in his layers of padded Clandestine hoodies. They all went back out to the cars, the last bloody beams of sunlight filtering between the dark tree trunks and spearing Andy’s eyes whenever he looked the wrong way. Andy grimaced when he saw the trunk. Pete had bought a lot of firewood, but not enough to last a full weekend of constantly keeping a fire going. At some point, they’d have to go get more from the woods, and Andy was quite certain that it would only be him making that trip. Still, it would get them through the night, and if it was going to snow as hard as it appeared, that would definitely be a blessing.

              Andy put the fire together in just a few minutes, and amazingly, it really lit up the sparse cabin, and began warming it almost immediately. There were small sconces built into the walls, and Andy went about lighting them, so soon the whole cabin was filled with warm, flickering light, and the people inside began stripping off their outermost layers.

              “Is this, um, it?” Ashlee asked, though to be fair, she sounded more curious than horrified. And she seemed much less inane than the image of her Andy had gotten from TV.

              “There appears to be a bathroom, a kitchen, and one bedroom back here,” Victoria said, peering her head back around the door frame into the main room.

              “Dibs on the bed,” Joe said. To the credit of the strangers Pete had brought, they didn’t fight it.

              Fortunately, camping was the sort of activity that didn’t allow for down time in which awkwardness could spawn. Once the fire was going, someone had to constantly make sure that it kept going, and even though the fire warmed up the entire log cabin fairly quickly, it still required work, enough so that soon everyone was a little overly warm in just t-shirts and jeans, what with the physical labor involved.

              After the fire was hot enough, Greta filled a kettle up with freshly fallen snow and hung it on a low metal bar she had rigged up over the fire to start it boiling. Andy must have looked approving at her, because she blushed when she saw him looking.

              “I just wanted to make some tea,” she said. “My friends and I actually go camping pretty often down in Illinois.”

              Andy snorted. “Lemme guess: you’re from Chicago too?”

              “I’m from Oak Brook,” she said. Andy heaved a sigh.

              “Is that a suburb of Chicago?” he asked. Greta flushed slightly, all the confirmation Andy needed.

              Andy sliced up potatoes and carrots and onions and put them all in tin-foil with a couple of veggie burgers, then threw it into the bottom of the fire, waiting for it to cook. He obligingly made a second version for Patrick, and then let everyone else squabble as they realized that while they brought plenty of food that _could_ be cooked over a fire, they had nothing to cook it with.

              Pete eventually put a coat back on and ran outside to get a stick. When he came back in his skin was frighteningly cold, and his eyes a little wild.

              “You picked a hell of a weekend for this, dude,” Pete said to Andy, shaking his head. “It’s fucking freezing out there.”

              “Should we just go back?” Patrick asked nervously.

              “Hey, if you want to try and get the car started in this weather, be my guest,” Pete said, but Andy felt a little nervous too. It really wasn’t supposed to be this cold. Sure, it wasn’t summer anymore, but these were hardly ideal conditions. Maybe he shouldn’t have ignored copious signs of the universe telling him to give it a rest.

              The unfortunate thing about camping in the middle of nowhere turned out to be that once they had the warmth, water, and food figured out, there was very little to talk about that didn’t come straight from a bad teen movie. And though Ashlee had more depth than Andy had initially suspected, she also seemed really fond of Pete, which, given the situation, was unfortunate.

              “You know, I absolutely _love_ your music,” Ashlee said. They were all sprawled out on the floor, a few blankets strewn beneath them, and Ashlee was leaning on Pete, resting one hand entirely on his chest.

              “Haha, thanks,” Pete said, looking away, “Patrick writes most of the music, actually.”

              “That’s cool,” Ashlee replied, not looking away from Pete for a moment, smoldering at him instead. Andy rolled his eyes pointedly at Joe, and Patrick, for his part, wasn’t paying attention at all. In one sense, Pete’s plan seemed to be working. Patrick was out of the house and interacting with girls, but he was all business as he listened to clips of music from Greta’s ipod and then critiqued her on her work, asking questions about what instruments were used where and how often she and her friend intended on trading vocals back and forth. Pete seemed more and more frustrated every time he looked at the professional distance between the two, gritting his teeth whenever Patrick said that a piece of the music didn’t quite fit right.

              Victoria, who had thus far remained fairly quiet, plopped down next to Joe and Andy, a very small bottle of a clear liquid in hand.

              “Soooooo,” she drawled, “Do I get an explanation for the weirdness? When Pete called I expected a leviathan rising from lake Superior or something, not camping with a Simpson sister.”

              Andy had every intention of playing the whole situation off as some unexplainable eccentricity of Pete’s.

              “Pete’s trying to hook Patrick up,” Joe said. Andy glared at him, but Joe shrugged.

              “Is he?” Victoria asked, amusement creeping into her voice. “He’s horrible at it.”

              “Yeah, well, tell us about it,” Andy sighed.

              “Does Patrick know?” she asked.

              “No, and don’t tell him, either,” Joe said sternly. “Pete might not be the best bass player, but he’s definitely the reason we get paychecks as nice as we do, and if Patrick finds out he might end up dead.”

              “My lips are sealed,” Victoria laughed. She had a nice, warm laugh, though it didn’t really detract from how intimidating she was. “It’s good that I like you guys. And not-camping.”

              “It’s nice to-” Andy began, but before he could finish his sentence, the wind outside howled, a loud, unearthly sound, like the tortured scream of something old and inhuman. The horrible noise sustained and Andy eventually clamped his hands over his ears to try and block it out.

              After nearly a minute of this, the windows on all sides of the cabin shattered, blowing glass in at them along with a painfully powerful wind. Andy ducked down to avoid getting hit by the shards of glass, throwing his arm over his face. When at last the wind died down, he chanced looking up again, only to find that the cabin was pitch black from the candles and fire being snuffed out.

***

              The evening hadn’t been going exactly as Pete had planned even before the windows had exploded.

              After the first few weeks of post-breakup drinking and Ghostbusters bingeing, Patrick began getting better the best way he knew how, which was throwing himself into music. But working on music, while a major part of their job as musicians and a perfectly valid thing for Patrick to spend time doing, did not involve that much socialization, and it was consuming his entire life.

Things with Anna had ended nearly a year ago, and the brief, whirlwind romance with Chicago had come to an abrupt halt months ago. Pete decided it was high time to take it upon himself to help Patrick move on. It’s what Pete would have wanted in his place.

              Pete also had a more selfish design on his best friend’s love life. The longer Patrick stayed at Pete’s house, very obviously single and completely enveloped in his work in the way that made him so purely Patrick, Patrick-not-from-concentrate, the more Pete’s chest ached to watch him.

              His brain was in a constant state of battle with itself whenever he looked at Patrick, tongue stuck out just slightly, left hand tugging at his hair, right hand scrawling across the nearest piece of paper with any amount of space on it and filling it up with notes.

              _This is your moment_ , half of his brain insisted, _he’s available. He’s obviously not as straight as either of you thought. He’s vulnerable-_

_He isn’t prey!_ The sane half of his brain would jump in. _And there are at least a thousand reasons that’s a horrible idea!_

              There were, in fact, seemingly endless reasons to not let his mind even hope to wander into the realm of possibilities, but only a few that mattered deeply. Firstly, there was no proof that Patrick wasn’t straight. No matter how masculine looking, Chicago might not count. Pete wasn’t sure if Chicago counted as a boy or not, but what he was sure of was that if Patrick had never fallen for the stupid city, Pete never would have considered the possibility, because there would be none in his mind.

Secondly, and astronomically more importantly, any potential relationship would wreak havoc on the band’s dynamic. Relationships from work were banned in some office settings, so why on earth would it work better if two of the four were in a relationship that would either keep going and leave the other two feeling like third and fourth wheels, or would end and possibly break up the band.

Thirdly, any relationship forming at all relied on the outlandish idea that Patrick would be as interested in him as he was in Patrick. They’d lived in a van together. They’d pissed on each other’s stuff. They’d gotten into fistfights. Patrick had seen the fallout from Pete’s other nightmarish relationships. It seemed unlikely.

              Fourthly, and more vital than any other reason: Pete couldn’t shake the feeling that he was bad. Bad for Patrick, whom he cared about desperately. It was already too much that he was putting him in danger simply by being friends and in a band with him. Whatever caught up to him first, his father, the fae, any number of magical creatures or angry exes that he had pissed off, they would surely go through the people he loved. There was no reason to paint an even brighter target on Patrick’s chest. Even without magical incentive. Pete doubted he was good for anyone’s health. He would ruin Patrick, and Patrick deserved so much better.

              Thus Pete came to the conclusion that what they both needed was for Patrick to get back into the game. Not that he had mentioned it to Patrick, but he was certain Patrick could see right through him.

              When the two of them (out in Wisconsin after significant amounts of pleading and wheedling from Pete) waited in Milwaukee International Airport to pick the girls up, Patrick had snorted when Pete told him who all they were going with.

              “What?” Pete hissed.

              “Nothing,” Patrick lied.

              “What?” Pete demanded, a little louder.

              “Nothing!” Patrick insisted.

              “What?” Pete half growled.

              Patrick looked directly ahead, somewhat smug as he finally answered. “There’s only one reason that Ashlee Simpson would agree to a camping trip with Fall Out Boy, and Joe, Andy, and I aren’t on the covers of tabloids.”

              Pete had been beginning to realize that Patrick was right before everything fell apart. Ashlee was just as touchy-feely and admiring as a fan, with a lot more confidence to boot. It wasn’t as though Pete wasn’t attracted to her. She was pretty, she was interesting, she loved fairy tales and Broadway musicals and actually related to Pete. But Pete had really been vying for the focus to be on Patrick. He supposed that it would make just as much sense for him to not be single anymore, but his heart just wasn’t in it. In truth, it was almost a relief when the cabin lights all blew out at once.

              Pete had just turned to try and see what that godawful noise was by standing up and looking out of the window, and only by merit of someone barreling into him and knocking him over did he not get blinded by the glass flying everywhere. When he opened his eyes and sat up, there was a tinkling noise that he assumed was bits of the window falling off of him and onto the ground, though he couldn’t be sure in the flat darkness of the cabin.

              “Holy shit,” he heard Joe say after a moment. “Okay, fuck. Is everyone alright?”

              An unsteady chorus of people all responded saying they were okay, Pete amongst them. His eyes were adjusting to the lack of light slowly, and there was luckily a reasonable amount of moonlight that night, magnified as it reflected off the snow so that there was just enough light to sort of see shapes by. Someone was gripping Pete’s arm, Patrick, by the sound of his labored breathing.

              “Does anyone have a flashlight?” Greta asked. “My phone isn’t working!”

              A wave of dread swept over Pete’s stomach at her words. Of course, none of them were getting service, but if it was something more… He pulled his SideKick out of his pocket and slid it open. Nothing. His battery had been almost full just minutes ago, he had been sure of it, and now it was completely dead.

              “My phone’s dead too,” he said, and knew before everyone else reported the same problem that no one’s phones would be working.

              “Hold on, I’ve brought flashlights in,” Andy said. “I just need to find them. Patrick: don’t move, there’s broken glass all over the floor.”

              “Why me specifically?” Patrick asked indignantly.

              “You know why,” Andy said darkly, then paused for a minute. “Klutz,” he added hastily, in attempts to cover up the strangeness of the request.

              Pete could hear Andy fumbling for a moment, and could even distantly see some motion that was probably Andy coming from roughly the same place before Andy yelled “Got it!”

              A moment passed.

              “It doesn’t work,” he said, his voice filled with disbelief.

              “Of course it doesn’t,” Pete moaned. “Guys, something’s really wrong here.”

              “Yeah, like the temperature rapidly dropping,” Greta said. “We should go grab some more wood while it’s light enough to see.”

              Another wave of remorse crashed over Pete, forcefully and painfully.

              “There is no more wood,” he sighed. “Not enough for a fire, anyway. We’ll have to get some from the forest.”

              “It’s been snowing all night,” Patrick interrupted. “It’s bound to be too wet to use.”

              “Not necessarily,” Andy said. “It hasn’t been snowing long, so hopefully we’ll be able to strip off the outer bark and still use the wood if we go and grab some. Pete, you can go grab what’s left in the car, and then I can go look in the woods for-”

              “Are you crazy?” Pete yelled. “We can’t split up! Don’t you guys know what’s going on?”

              Pete felt certain that if everyone’s faces were still visible, they’d all be giving him dubious looks.

              “We’re in a cabin in the woods and all of the lights blew out at once. This is, like, horror movie 101. We cannot split up.”

              “Dude, it’s storming out,” Andy said, sounding exasperated. “Do you want me to bring someone with me? Because either way we need to get a fire going and fix the windows kind of immediately.”

              “Fine,” Pete said. “Bring Joe with you. Patrick, you can come with me.”

              “What are we? Girls too dainty to handle inclement weather? Damsels in distress?” Ashlee asked, affronted.

              “Girl, if you want to go outside in that blizzard, no one is stopping you,” Victoria said. “But I’ll take the hit on feminism if it means I get to stay inside.”

              “I’ll go with you and Patrick,” Ashlee said obstinately.

              “I can help get wood,” Greta offered. “More hands will help get this done faster.”

              “I like her,” Joe said conversationally, “Let’s go.”

              It took everyone a minute to gather up their coats and extra layers, but once they were all bundled up again, they headed outside. As soon as they left the cabin, it was easier to see everything. The moon and the snow were bright enough that Pete could see everything just fine, even if no color came of the scant light. Greta, Joe, and Andy took off down a trail right next to the cabin, not venturing deep into the woods as they almost immediately started stripping branches from the tree.

              Pete’s earlier fears felt almost silly as he grabbed the one sad looking bundle of firewood from the backseat, but the night was eerily silent, and he was grateful to not have to do even this menial task alone. The car door opened easily enough, but the light didn’t come on when he was in the backseat. Pete tried not to panic, because maybe that was just the way the rental cars from that company came, but he felt uneasy.

              Pete handed the stack of wood to Patrick and said he wanted to try something, then climbed over into the front seat and turned the key in the ignition. The engine started to life at once, and Pete heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe he was being ridiculous.

              He turned off the car and the three of them went back inside. They took to the fireplace at once, which turned out to be sort of pointless without a light to get things started with. Vicky came over with an enormous package of matches and lit one, giving them just enough light to see by.

              Five matches, one page ripped out of a poetry book Pete had been reading, and a lot of perseverance later, they had a fire going in the hearth again, and Pete re-lit the candles while Ashlee swept up the broken glass. Once done, the cabin was still freezing due to the enormous, empty windows.

              “I guess you didn’t bring any tarp with you?” Victoria asked dully.

              “Nope,” Pete agreed.

              “Andy might’ve brought some?” Patrick said hopefully.

              “He brought tents!” Pete said, eyes widening with the realization. “If we could rip those up-”

              “We won’t even have to rip them up,” Patrick interjected. “There’s only four windows in here, so if we stay in the living room tonight, we can just use one tent per window. Then we keep it warm and Andy might forgive us someday.”

              “I’m game,” Victoria said, giving Patrick a look that was almost admiration, but not quite. It was more appraising, more curious. Pete didn’t like it, and felt suddenly possessive.

              “Let’s go back out to Andy’s car, then. Patrick?” Pete said.

              “You want me to come?” Ashlee said.

              “No, stay here in the warmth,” Pete said, as sincerely as he could manage. Ashlee was still shaking like mad, which might have explained why she didn’t fight it this time. Patrick nodded, and he pulled his coat back on before shoving the door open with his shoulder.

              Back out in the moonlight, without the sound of the fire crackling, the whole situation seemed suddenly intimate to Pete as Patrick looked over at him, teeth chattering.

              “I fucking called it, you know,” he said. The snow was getting really thick on the ground, difficult to slough through even in snow boots. It was doing them the favor of brightening the night, but it was dense, wet snow, the kind that would leave Pete feeling damp for hours after being out in it.

              “Called what?” Pete asked.

              “I’m gonna get hypothermia out here,” Patrick said, but he didn’t sound all that angry. He seemed mostly resigned, and a little amused. “And incidentally, I didn’t even know you liked camping.”

              Pete hated camping, but being fae, had to walk around the truth a little better than that.

              “You should always try experiences that you don’t often have,” he said. “Besides, we’re having an adventure.”

              “Yeah, you know, when I think of a good time, it always involves getting trapped in the middle of the woods in a blizzard,” Patrick laughed.

              The range rover was, blessedly, unlocked, and it didn’t take too much digging to get to the bundled up tents after Pete crawled into the backseat. But as he began handing the packages back out to Patrick, something started to bother him.

              “What did you say?” Pete asked as he climbed back out, the last tent in tow.

              “I said that my idea of a good time is getting trapped out in a blizzard?” Patrick said, raising his eyebrows at Pete. “I’m just being a dick. Why?”

              Pete’s frown deepened. The snow was still falling fast and heavy, and yet…

              “This isn’t a blizzard,” Pete said, looking up at the sky and then cursing as he got an eyeful of a snow. “I mean, come on, it’s not even windy!”

              “Then where did the wind come from earlier?” Patrick asked. “It’s snowing, and it must’ve been the storm that knocked out the windows. We’re probably just in the eye of it or something.”

              Pete was going to say something else, but whatever it was was forgotten as the wind very suddenly kicked up again, blowing the opposite direction from earlier and slamming Pete into the side of Andy’s car, face first. He was only distantly aware of screaming coming from behind him. The force of the wind kept him pinned against the cold metal of the door, and from the force he hit his head with, he felt a heavy throbbing coming from his nose, and a warm sensation spreading down his face.

              The wind roared with its unearthly screaming, as before, for half a minute before it died down, and Pete fell backwards against the ground, his whole head throbbing. The warmth that had been washing down over his mouth and chin now spread outward, dripping into his ears. Cold as he was, the sensation was thick and unpleasant. After laying there for a minute, he forced his eyes open, blinking at the completely calm and still night. His vision was spinning slightly, and he sat up as gingerly as possible, tugging one of his gloves off and holding his hand up to his face. His nose hurt to the touch, but didn’t appear to be broken. Bleeding profusely, but not broken. His hand came away dripping red, and he groaned even as he put his glove back on.

              Pete pinched the bridge of his nose to try and stop the bleeding, then turned around to talk to Patrick, only to feel his stomach sink when he realized that no one was standing behind him anymore.

              “Patrick?” Pete called, and was shocked by how quiet he sounded. It seemed like the night swallowed his voice, muffled by the snow. He cleared his throat and tried again.

              “Patrick!” he yelled, but again the sound was swallowed.

              Pete gritted his teeth. The wind would have blown Patrick directly into the trees, alone, and with no flashlight. Plus, if he had hit his head and been knocked unconscious… it wasn’t a hard decision for Pete to make, leaving the tent on the ground and plunging into the forest.

              Just a few feet under the cover of trees the moonlight seemed far less substantial, and the sparse light turned the trees all to black and the snow to a pallid gray. Not for the first time, Pete wished he carried some kind of weapon like the other guys in his band did. It wasn’t as though he could fight the weather with a sword, but it would have made him feel better nonetheless.

              “Patrick?” he called out, softer this time. His voice echoed strangely against the trees, and he curled in on himself, biting his lip. He couldn’t have been pushed that far by the wind, could he?

              Pete remembered how hard he had been held against the car by nothing but the cold air, how impossible it was to move, and he shuddered. Yes, yes he could have been pushed that far.

              Despair swelled in Pete’s chest as he looked around the forest. His vision was still blurry, or maybe it was all the snowfall, and he couldn’t make sense of where he was. He was about to go back and get Andy and Joe and a flashlight when he heard the howling noise in the forest again.

              Pete had just enough time to let out a moan of despair as he dropped down flat on his stomach on the ground. The snow on his face was painfully cold, but he could feel the wind tearing at his back, and he stayed put until it had stopped again. He stood up, fear constricting his ribcage. Another attack from the wind that strong meant he didn’t know how far back Patrick could be. Blood was still pouring out of his nose and melting the snow beneath him, and Pete was hovering right on the edge of a very poorly timed panic attack.

              “PATRICK!” he screamed again, stumbling forward, no longer entirely sure if he was doing the saving or if he needed to be saved. It was too dark everywhere and all he could see was white snowflakes whipping across the backdrop of inky black trees. “PATRICK!”

              Pete chanced a look over his shoulder and found, just as he feared, that he couldn’t see the clearing in front of the cabin that their cars were parked in. He kept stumbling forward blindly, desperate to find someone, anyone. He felt on the verge of tears when the wind came to a dead stop again. The sky stopped spitting snow and instead it began to fall lightly again. The night became almost peaceful, aside from the blood streaming out of Pete’s nose.

              Taking deep breaths, Pete continued forward. The trees were gnarled and angry looking, and he stayed hunched over as he stumbled forward. He was about to call out again when he hears someone else yell.

              “PETE!” Patrick screamed, but Pete couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from, the forest was so dark.

              “PATRICK?” Pete yelled back. He ran forward, his head pivoting wildly as he tried to see something that wasn’t another damn tree. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

              Patrick cried out again, a wordless cry of fright or pain, Pete couldn’t tell, and he turned left slightly, as much as he loathed to switch directions, he needed to find Patrick immediately.

              All the snow and trees looked the same, and Pete wasn’t getting any closer to the noises when he felt something warm and wet drip into his hair. His spine stiffened at once, and he looked up slowly, dreading what he would see the whole time.

              Directly above his head about fifteen feet in the air, Patrick was thrashing against a thick branch wrapped around his waist and a smaller branch wrapped across his mouth. His coat and shirt had ridden up, and the bark must have been rubbing painfully against his skin, because there was blood seeping out from around the branch.

              Even as Pete tried to make sense of the scene above him, the branch suddenly pulled tighter against his stomach, and Patrick screamed into the smaller branch. He kicked wildly, missing the tree completely, and the branch unfurled slightly, holding him out so that his feet couldn’t reach the base.

              “It’s moving,” Pete said aloud. “The- the tree- it’s- it’s alive-” he stuttered, suddenly feeling just as woozy as he had when his head first hit the car.

              Savagely, Patrick bit down on the branch and spat out a chunk of it, all of the tree branches rustling ominously in response.

              “Get me out of here!” Patrick yelled.

              “The tree is alive,” Pete whimpered.

              “ALL TREES ARE ALIVE!” Patrick screamed. He pushed against the branch that was still holding him in the air, but it must have tightened, because he whined soon after, and another shower of blood fell on Pete’s face. “HELP ME!”

              “It’s _moving_ ,” Pete whined, too scared to move.

              “Pete!” Patrick pleaded. He held a knife in his hands that Pete hadn’t seen before, and before Pete could warn him against it, Patrick began to hack at the bark.

              Something deep in the woods rumbled angrily while Patrick tore at the branch. Pete knew he had to help him, but he couldn’t get his feet to move.

              And then, when he began to fight off the panic slightly, his feet still wouldn’t move. When he looked down at them, he could see thin roots twisted around his feet and holding him down, roots that were crawling up his legs.

              Pete shrieked as he started stamping at the roots, freeing his feet with great effort and beating them back down. He looked back up to see the branch holding Patrick was thrashing, whipping back and forth, but Patrick was still sawing at the branch.

              As the tree swung Patrick lower in its continued attempts to shake him off, Pete grabbed Patrick by the legs, getting swung back up with him. Patrick let out a cry of pain, but Pete held fast.

              “What are you doing?!” Patrick moaned.

              “I’m saving you!” Pete insisted.

              “Of course you are!” Patrick snarled, giving up on trying to saw at the branch with his smooth blade and stabbing it instead. Pete could see a pretty drastic dent in the branch where Patrick had been working at it, and it looked like a pretty weak spot. Pete had a plan, albeit a bad one.

              The next time the branch swung low, Pete hauled himself up and grabbed hold of the branch around Patrick’s waist and let himself drop, throwing all his weight onto the branch. With a loud groan, it snapped right where Patrick had been digging into it, and the two of them tumbled onto the ground.

              Patrick pulled the remnants of the branch off him, leaving him with a pretty gruesome looking stomach, but Pete didn’t see much more than blood and scraps of skin, so he hoped it could wait on the hospital. He hauled Patrick to his feet before the roots could pin them to the ground and they both took off running, still holding onto each other for dear life.

              Mercifully, they hadn’t actually ended up that deep in the forest, and without the roaring wind, they could distantly see the fire blazing through the cabin windows. They both sprinted for the clearing, not slowing down once until they collapsed inside the door, falling to the ground breathlessly.

              “Holy shit,” Victoria said, her eyes wide. Andy, Joe, and Greta were back in the cabin, and they looked incredibly relieved to see Pete and Patrick alive. The relief passed quickly as Andy breathed in and instantly covered his mouth and nose, and Joe grimaced.

              “What happened?” Ashlee gasped.

              Pete, as it turned out, was shaking too hard to answer. His voice simply wouldn’t work, and he kept smashing his feet against the ground to fight off the sensation of phantom roots. It was Patrick, after a long silence, who answered, still clutching his stomach tightly as he spoke.

              “The trees are, um, animated,” he said. “And I don’t think they’re very happy that we’re here.”

***

              To the everlasting credit of Greta and Ashlee, they didn’t panic as much as Joe would have expected. Had he been given no introduction to magic and watched Pete and Patrick stumble back into the cabin covered in blood and talking about the trees attacking, he wouldn’t have taken it in stride, but the two of them both did. The same could not be said for Pete.

              “It was like the Evil fucking Dead out there,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I don’t want this to go down like the Evil Dead. I don’t want to get tree-raped.”

              “It’s just a movie, and I doubt we’re going to have the same problem,” Patrick said, but he had his arm slung protectively over Pete. “We’re gonna get out of here, okay?”

              While Pete and Patrick had been missing, Ashlee had explained their early plan to the others, so Andy and Joe blocked off the windows while they waited, with the plan of Joe turning and hunting them down as soon as the girls weren’t paying attention, as they’d be easy enough to find even in a snowstorm while he was a wolf.

              Joe couldn’t leave those two alone for five minutes without them getting fatally injured.

              It wasn’t as bad as it looked, not really, but Pete’s clothes gave the impression that he had had a very messy first dinner as a vampire, and Patrick was bleeding steadily out of a circle that went all around his stomach.

Getting out of there, however, was a bit of a problem. No one doubted that the trees were attacking, but they as a group couldn’t decide whether their best bet was to bunker down in the cabin for the night, or to try and make a run for it.

              “We should just go for it,” Joe insisted. “Whether it’s a storm or something else, we should leave while we can and deal with it on a very sunny spring day.”

              “We can’t leave,” Pete said, his breath short and his sentences running together. “It’s not gonna let us. This is like a horror movie, and it never lets you leave.”

              “This isn’t a horror movie,” Andy said, rolling his eyes. “But he has a point nonetheless. Whatever’s out there is angry, apparently, and probably doesn’t want us to go. Besides, we drove through miles and miles of nothing but the woods to get here, and being out in a car puts is in a pretty vulnerable position.”

              “What if whatever’s out there wants us to leave?” Greta asked.

              The logic made sense to Joe. But so did Andy’s. It seemed a roughly even risk.

              “We could put it to a vote,” Ashlee suggested. She looked terrified, but still she held her shoulders back. Joe was deeply grateful for everyone keeping a level head. “All in favor of trying to leave?” she asked.

              Joe, Greta, Victoria, and Patrick raised their hands. Ashlee made a pained face, but nodded.

              “Then let’s go for it,” she said. Joe turned to Andy to double check, and he nodded curtly. Joe managed to pull him slightly aside, his lips pressed together nervously.

              “Bring any weapons with you?” he asked.

              “My katana,” Andy said. “And a couple of knives, just for outdoors-y stuff, you know? But not enough.”

              “What do you think this is?” Joe asked. Everyone else was getting redressed in all their winter things, and they weren’t paying close attention, but Pete came over.

              “That’s what scares me,” Pete said. “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before. Unless fucking Tolkien creatures have taken to roaming the woods of Wisconsin.”

              “Dude, try and calm down, okay?” Joe pleaded. “Whatever this is we’ll get out of it okay. We have a perfect track record thus far, right?”

              “And it statistically increases our chances of failure every time,” Pete said. Joe made a face.

              “Just put your coat on, man,” he pleaded.

              Pete obligingly followed, but he gave Joe a dark look. The group of them ignored the still burning fire and stepped out into the night together.

              It was very quiet outside, almost alarmingly so for Joe. Winter was always quieter, but this was something else. Even the snow had slowed, and he made for Andy’s car as quickly as he could. The trees seemed to loom a little taller than they had earlier, and he wanted to get as far away from these woods as fast as possible.

              As Joe walked forward, though, he noticed something was wrong. The cars weren’t the shape they were supposed to be. He was almost to the car before his brain put the pieces together: the cars were crushed, trapped under heavy pine trees that had fallen down directly on top of them. Joe felt his stomach sweep out from under him as he stared at it.

              “Shit, shit shit shit,” Andy muttered, running a hand through his hair.

              “It isn’t going to let us leave,” Pete said quietly.

              “None of that,” Joe demanded harshly. Pete’s rental car looked completely crumpled, but Andy’s didn’t look too bad. It was hurt, but all they would really need to do is get the tree off of the top of it, and it would probably drive again.

              Joe walked up to the car, ignoring the protests coming from the group behind him, and he got a grip on the top of the tree, pushing up as best he could. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but as he was lifting, he heard a creak, and another tree was falling, too suddenly, with no cause, and it clipped Joe hard on the shoulder before crashing onto the hood of the car. Tears welled up in Joe’s eyes from the smarting, but he read the warning easily enough. He gave Andy a questioning look, and Andy nodded. That was enough for him.

              “We’re going back inside,” Joe said, and Patrick nodded. Joe was walking back towards the cabin when he hit his head rather hard on a tree branch. He stumbled backwards, unsure where the branch could have come from when he realized he didn’t hit it, rather it hit him, swinging wildly in between them and the cabin. Joe gulped. In fact, rather a lot of the trees were starting to bend in the middle, leaning over in between the cars and the cabin, slowly at first, then all at once until there was a complicated cluster of tangled tree branches and trunks and roots forming an organic wall between them and the door.

              “Well then,” Joe said.

              “Fuck,” Andy said.

              “I’m guessing you didn’t bring a weed whacker?” Greta asked Andy hopefully. A low hiss ran through the trees, and she gulped, stepping backwards a couple of feet. A few tendrils of vines slithered out of the tree wall towards them, and Joe jumped backwards as well, an instinctive snarl bubbling to his lips.

              “We can’t fight the entire forest!” Andy squeaked.

              Joe could feel the panic rising in all of his bandmates through the pack bond, and he struggled to separate his thoughts from them. He was an alpha. This is what he was for. He had to do something.

              “Andy, you said you had blades?” he asked, straightening his back.

              “Uh-huh?” Andy said. Joe didn’t turn away from the trees.

              “Grab ‘em,” he demanded. He was staring the writhing trees dead on, and he swallowed back panic before he spoke.

              “What do you want?” he asked the copse of trees tentatively. A hissing wind ran through the trees, like the sound of thousands of people whispering all at once, a crowded concert before the lights went up.

              “ _Leave_ ,” the hissing formed into a word, reverberated all through the woods, coming from every single side of Joe: “ _Leave, leave, leave_.”

              With great difficulty, Joe did not ask the angry trees if that was a pun.

              “Well, um, we can’t,” he said, jerking his thumb towards the cars. “You trashed our rides.”

              “ _If you do not leave, you die_ ,” the forest whispered hoarsely, much more unanimously than the last time they spoke. Joe recoiled with the force of their words, but didn’t run.

              “If you could repair our cars, we will get out of your, um, vines,” Joe said. He could feel Pete’s glare in his back, but he couldn’t help himself.

              “ _Leave or die!_ ” the trees were all but shrieking in the wind. Why, Joe wondered, did they have to go camping in November? A twenty-mile hike would not be fun in summer, but it was equally perilous to the murder trees in winter.

              Just as Joe was weighing the odds in his mind, something pressed into the small of his back. He turned, and Andy handed him a small ax, perfect for what he would prefer.

              “We’re gonna leave in the morning,” Joe said, and swung the ax in a wide semicircle, felling a number of the plants in one swing. A screaming sound ran through the woods, but he kept slicing, fast as he could. He didn’t have the time to turn around and yell at everyone else, so he really hoped that his band got with the program pretty quickly.

              It didn’t take all that long to cut a human sized hole in the trees, and as soon as there was room to do so, Joe jumped through the space and sprinted the rest of the distance to the cabin. The moment he crossed the threshold, he turned around to see the rest of the group safely inside. Victoria and Patrick ran in, followed by Greta, Andy, and Ashlee, but thick grey vines were twisted around the opening before Pete could get in. Pete let out a scream worthy of a horror movie scream queen, and Joe hurled himself unwillingly back out into the cold night.

              One harsh swing slashed diagonally across the opening got rid of the vines, and Joe reached out and dragged Pete past the barrier by the collar of his shirt, tugging him into the cabin and slamming the door shut. By some miracle, the fire was still lit, though all the candles had long since blown out.

              “So,” Joe said, forcing his voice to remain steady. “New plan. Anybody got one?”

              “Get it off!” Pete screamed, his voice hitching as he did. Joe turned down to look at Pete, lying on the ground and wrestling a gray and snakelike vine that was wrapped multiple times around his leg in a deathly tight grip, and whose severed end was crawling up Pete’s chest and spewing sticky white sap onto his face.

              Joe snatched at the vine and tried to pull, but it was too thick, and there wasn’t much room to grip. He gave Ashlee and Greta one apologetic glance, then transformed into a werewolf.

              The vine was easy enough to bite through, and soon all that was left of it were small pieces flopping pitifully on the ground. He checked over his shoulder to make sure his clothes hadn’t fallen too out of place and shifted back, pulling Pete roughly to his feet.

              “Thanks,” Pete said breathlessly, and stamped on one of the pieces of vine for good measure. “Um. Okay. Shit. What do we do?”

              “Did anyone else see that?” Ashlee asked. Poor girl.

              “He does that sometimes, don’t worry about it. If we’re gonna be stuck here for a while, does anyone have anything that could be used as a bandage?” Patrick asked.

              “Please,” Andy added.

              “I really don’t think we have anything big enough for that,” Joe said apologetically. “It’s not deep, is it?”

              “No, just uncomfortable,” Patrick sighed. “I’ve had worse. Obviously.”

              “So you do this often?” Ashlee asked.

              “Let’s deal with that later,” Greta said, her voice steely as if to confirm that there would certainly be more interrogation later. “Right now we have bigger problems. Namely: how do we get out?”

              “Okay, so one last check, does anyone’s cell phone work?” Joe asked. He didn’t really expect anything, and that was exactly what he got. None of them would even turn on, just flat, useless black screens. Joe heaved a heavy sigh when he saw the same looks of despair mirrored on everyone else’s face. He could stay calm, though. Staying calm, taking charge, that was his job, and he could handle it.

              “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So we’re about five miles away from the main road, and another ten miles from town once we get there. It’s not a pleasant walk, but it’s not impossible. Problem being-”

              “Trying to walk that far in the trees is basically suicide!” Greta exploded. Joe jerked his head at her.

              “Yeah, that,” he said. “But one of the cars might work, if we could just get the trees off of it.”

              “How do you propose we do that?” Patrick asked.

              “Well, if you guys distract it-” Joe began.

              “How do we distract the entire forest?” Victoria asked.

              “Obviously we find what’s really behind this,” Andy said.

              “And what do you think is really behind it?” Greta asked. This girl, who couldn’t be older than eighteen, was sharp as hell, and sturdy too. Joe could’ve used her around in most magical situations.

              But as for the question, Joe shot one quick look at Pete. Pete was staring at the floor, and when he wouldn’t meet Joe’s eyes, Joe reached out in his mind, trying to see if he could find anything. It would explain why Pete was so scared, certainly, but to his disappointment, Pete didn’t seem to think that there was any connection. Not consciously, anyway.

              “I don’t know,” Joe admitted. “But trees, they’re not exactly the pinnacle of evil, are they? And they’re all working too in sync to just be, you know, living trees or something. I think Andy is right. Something is orchestrating this.”

              “How the fuck do you propose we find out what’s doing this?” Patrick asked wearily.

              “Wander in the forest till we find it?” Joe said.

              “That’s a horrible idea,” Patrick told him.

              “Go on the offensive and hope it reveals itself?”

              “That’s worse.”

              “I think we will have a better shot at getting out if we stay here until sunrise,” Ashlee suggested. “I mean, everything will be easier to see, and maybe this thing will even be dulled. Isn’t that how monsters usually work anyway?”

              Joe didn’t want to wait, but looking at his bleeding and exhausted friends, he couldn’t deny that it might be necessary.

              “It probably will be easier to see in the daylight,” he said begrudgingly. It wouldn’t be, not for him and Andy, but for the others, it would be good for them to try and rest. And, in a testament to the human capability for suppression, they did.

              It took only thirty minutes of sitting in relative silence by the fire before Pete began nodding off, and Patrick soon after. Ashlee fell asleep too, and Joe couldn’t tell with Andy, as he was still sitting straight up, but his eyes were closed. Joe was too on guard to think of sleep, and while Greta curled up, eyes wide open, Victoria looked just as wakeful as he felt.

              “Just another adventure for you?” she asked in a low voice. Joe shook his head before she was done asking.

              “No such thing, really,” he sighed. “I mean. You know, any time we do something like this could be our last. And I just…” he trailed off.

              “You just?” Victoria prodded.

              “I just wish that it would stop,” Joe said, so softly that he wasn’t sure she would hear him.

              “Why does it happen to you so often?” she asked.

              “I don’t know,” Joe shrugged. “Sometimes we seek it out, if we think we can help. Andy and Pete have a lot of enemies just by being born, and I have a lot of enemies just by being a werewolf. It’s not so bad, I don’t think, for the three of us.”

              “The three of you?” Victoria was looking at Patrick, blood softly dripping from his saturated shirt onto the bare wooden floor.

              “When you’re a monster,” Joe said, very slowly, his voice low, “The people around you get hurt. No exceptions. None of us want to, of course not. But I can’t kid myself in thinking he’d be in this kind of danger if we weren’t in a band together. I’m just… I’m really scared that we’re going to get him killed.”

              “That’s pretty intense,” Victoria said, her eyes wide, resting one warm hand on Joe’s shoulder. She spoke slowly and reassuringly. “But do you ever think that you take yourself way too goddamn seriously?”

              Joe scowled at her, and she snorted.

              “For real, dude, Patrick can take care of himself,” she said, a touch of intrigue coloring her voice as she said his name. “And it isn’t as though you and Pete dragged the rest of us in here in chains. Shit happens. My singer is a magical purple were-cobra. The tree rape monsters from a b-movie are not your fault, and you seriously need to stop acting so martyred, or it’ll impede your leadership skills.”

              She paused and pulled a dark glass bottle out of her bag.

              “Thirsty?” she asked, sloshing the drink inside.

              “I don’t think I should get drunk before we go fight… whatever.”

              “Then don’t get drunk,” Victoria suggested, handing him the bottle. The wine inside was room temperature, but pretty good, and the warmth that rose in Joe’s chest from it helped to calm him down a little.

              About halfway through the bottle Joe heard a noise outside. He couldn’t place the keening sound, close to the sound of cicadas, but more indistinct, and the longer he waited, much louder.

              “We’re not going to get to wait til morning, are we?” Victoria asked, clearly already knowing the answer.

              “Wake the others up,” Joe said, jumping to his feet. The tents were secured over the windows, and Joe approached one of the with extreme hesitancy. The tarp was snapping, suddenly, concave one moment and convex the next. He grabbed the machete he had been using earlier off the floor, and slowly wrapped his fingers around one side of the tent. He was about to pull it back when there was a crash, then a rip, and an enormous, sharply pointed branch blasted through the tarp right next to Joe’s face.

              “Fuck,” Joe muttered, cutting the branch off where it came in, but all of the tents over the windows began to get torn up as trees ripped them apart.

              “We have a problem!” Victoria squeaked.

              “I know,” Joe growled, trying to hack off branches and keep up with the intrusions in the cabin.

              “No, like, a very different kind of problem,” Victoria said, her voice getting higher in panic.

              “What now?” Joe groaned, turning around. He couldn’t see anything different in the sleeping bodies of the group, but then he saw Victoria pointing directly at a creeping, greenish-gray vine pulled taut across Andy’s mouth. His heart sank as he looked at the floor, where hundreds of tiny vines had sprung up from the cracks in the cabin ground.

              “Oh you have got to be fucking with me right now,” Joe said, slashing across the window, wide open to the elements now that the trees had destroyed it.

              “Any ideas?” Victoria asked.

              “Search Patrick for a knife and cut them free, I’m a little busy!” Joe grunted. A branch tapped him lightly on the back and he spun around, slashing it in half. He couldn’t believe the murderous evil woods had such a sense of humor.

              He could hear Victoria rummaging around and occasionally making noises of fear or distaste when one of the tiny creeping vines tried to grab onto her. Most of his attention was focused on keeping the windows as clear as he could. The rough branches kept barely missing his head, occasionally hitting him on the shoulder or poking him in the sides, but he kept them all from getting more than a few feet into the cabin, while the rest of his band and their guests remained easy, vulnerable targets. His heart was kicked into overdrive, the cabin no longer a place of safety, but a cage.

              “Oh god, I think they’re waking up,” Victoria said. “I’m sorry about this, I just really need your knife!” she said apologetically, undignified noises coming from a mostly muffled Patrick.

              “Gotcha!” she gasped, and Joe breathed a brief sigh of relief as he kept tearing at the windows.

              “Fuck,” Patrick groaned, and Joe felt a tiny twinge of annoyance that she wasn’t freeing Andy or Greta first, but got over it quickly. It didn’t take long before Patrick was on his feet, Andy’s sword in hand and covering two of the four windows.

              “New plan?” Patrick half-yelled, as he tore at the plants. Joe noted that he must have pulled at the wound somewhere, as there was a bit of fresh blood dripping on the floor, but it didn’t look bad.

              “I’m open to suggestions!” Joe yelled back. The muffled noises of protest behind them were getting more pronounced as everyone was now awake and aware of their captivity. Luckily, Victoria was quick and clever with a knife, and pretty soon most people were on their feet again, gathering their bearings and helping at the windows, but Pete was more difficult.

              “Please stay still, I’m getting you out!” Victoria pleaded with him, and Joe didn’t have to turn to face them to know that Pete was probably thrashing like mad and not thinking logically.

              “Switch with me!” Patrick yelled, and a moment later, Victoria was up with Joe, shockingly talented with a blade as she cleared the windows with few swings.

              “Hey, hey, come on,” Patrick said softly, all the panic and urgency gone from his voice from just behind Joe. “It’s gonna be fine, okay? I’m right here and it’s going to be fine, I swear.”

              Joe wouldn’t have believed it could be so simple for Patrick if he hadn’t felt Pete’s mind ease up inside his own, and a moment later, he and Patrick were standing just behind him.

              “How’s that new plan going?” Joe grunted.

              “How long can we keep this up?” Patrick asked. As if the forest wanted to answer his question, there was a loud creak and a deep resounding thud, one that shook the whole cabin and knocked Joe where he stood, followed by the sound of slowly splintering wood.

              Joe looked up as if he was in slow motion, not quite surprised when, upon looking up, he saw the ceiling of the cabin caving in around what could be roughly described as a thin tree trunk.

              “This place is going to come down,” Joe said. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Let’s try running away part two.”

              “Right,” Greta said, and being closest to the door, she threw it open and led the group as they ran outside.

***

              When Patrick was younger, he had recurring nightmares of running away from monsters but never being able to escape, because no matter how hard he tried, he could never run much faster in these dreams than he could walk through water.

              One of the few upsides to being constantly chased by monsters in reality was that these dreams had almost entirely disappeared. In reality, he could run much faster than usual if he were, for example, being pursued by angry and sentient trees.

              The entire distance from the cabin to Andy’s car, Patrick had Pete’s hand gripped vice-tight in his own, half-dragging him alongside him so Pete didn’t end up last in the group yet again. He only reluctantly let go when they reached the car and he had to help lift fallen trees from it, more than there had been before.

              The trees that had fallen on the car were, thankfully, young pines, and while the needles were scratching the hell out of him when he even tried to grasp the trunks, they were mercifully light. Andy’s car looked like a mess, but the hood over the engine was mostly just dented, and there was still room for all of them in the back, even if the roof was slightly lower than it used to be.

              The seven of them piled into his car, Andy jamming the key into the ignition as the trees creaked ominously.

              “Come on come on come on,” he said under his breath like a prayer, and when the dashboard lit up and the car turned on, Patrick cheered out loud, and he wasn’t the only one. He squeezed Pete’s hand reassuringly as Andy spun the car around in a controlled 180, then slammed down on the gas the moment they were facing the road out of the woods.

              The car was flying forward, and even in the darkness it felt brighter than what Patrick was used to. He turned to look at Pete and evaluate his expression, but rather than still looking frightened, Pete looked like he was concentrating on something very intensely. The trees outside of the window were whizzing by much too quickly, but Patrick wasn’t going to suggest that Andy slow down. Five miles, five miles, they could make it five miles.

              “What’s up?” Patrick asked Pete softly. It was pointless to whisper, but the sound was intended to be calm and soothing. Pete no longer seemed to need soothing, however, as his brow was furrowed in concentration.

              “I have an idea,” he said, slowly, chewing over each word. “I think this might be… but it doesn’t make sense for this at all. We’re not trying to hurt them, so I can’t imagine why… they’re peaceful creatures…”

              “I suppose it would kill you to elaborate?” Patrick asked.

              “I can only think of one creature that has this kind of command over trees, but they’re not violent, and they only act out of defense!” Pete said, frustration coloring his tone. His teeth were leaving deep indentations in his lip, and Patrick gave his hand another squeeze.

              “We’ll be out of here soon, so it doesn’t matter,” he said.

              “Yeah,” Pete said, “But I definitely want to check this out later.”

              Patrick definitely did not want to check this out later, but he would go with Pete anyway. Naturally.

              They were still driving way too fast, the trees just barely beginning to thin when something went wrong.

              “SHIT!” Andy screamed, slamming on the brakes. The seatbelt cut into Patrick’s injured stomach as he lurched forward, the car skidding to a jarring stop with a squeal of the brakes.

              Patrick looked up and through the windshield to see a pile of trees spread across the road, a towering stack of thick tree trunks. It was thick and wide across the bottom, and made the previous wall of trees they had dealt with look like a thin rice-paper screen.

              “Shit,” Patrick agreed.

              Andy swore under his breath the whole time he wrestled with the car door, but he stepped out after a minute, Joe right behind him. Patrick sighed, and followed.

              It was freezing outside. Colder than it had been all night, though the wind had stilled for the moment. Patrick wasn’t about to get complacent, however. He made his stance as solid as possible and prepared to dive to the ground at any moment, after getting thrown a few dozen feet the last time.

              “Shit shit SHIT!” Andy screamed, kicking at one of the bottom logs. Patrick jumped as he yelled. He wasn’t used to Andy losing his cool, and it wasn’t helping his general sense of well-being.

              “Fuck, Pete, you were right, you were fucking right, we’re in a goddamn horror movie I can’t fucking-!” Andy yelled, and punched one of the higher up pieces of wood. There was a dull cracking sound, and Patrick winced, unsure whether it came from Andy or the tree.

              “Blair Witch, apparently,” Victoria said tonelessly. Patrick turned to see if she was okay, then caught the line of her gaze, right at the ground, where a copse of tiny saplings was growing out of the road in the shape of an arrow pointing left into the woods.

              “Everyone stay calm,” Joe commanded, no alpha command in his voice, but so sturdy it was hardly needed. “We took the car pretty far, so we should really be able to walk to the main road from here and it won’t take too long-”

              “No, we should follow it,” Pete said. Patrick turned to face him slowly, hoping the “Are-you-fucking-crazy?” look on his face didn’t come off as overly offensive.

              “Are you fucking crazy?” Andy asked. Well, never mind then.

              “Probably,” Pete said with a wry smile. “But that’s not the point. I’m going in, feel free to follow me.”

              “ ** _You are not going in_** ,” Joe said, alpha voice out now and tinged with a layer of panic. Pete stopped walking, but he glared at Joe.

              “Look, I know what this is, and I know how to handle it,” Pete said.

              “Then what is it and how do we handle it?” Joe asked, his face still dark and angry.

              “These are nymphs,” Pete said. “Wood nymphs.”

              There was a beat of silence.

              “Like… like, just to clarify, you mean the Greek tree spirits that just exist to guard trees and occasionally have sex?” Andy asked.

“The very same,” Pete said. “It’s- that’s why I’ve been panicked all night long. It’s instinctive. Like how humans fear spiders on instinct, fae fear nymphs on instinct. We’ve got a bit of a history, you know. Because fae have a natural affinity for nature and nymphs are tree spirits, they didn’t really like the competition and they’re playful spirits so millennia ago they started setting nasty traps for fairies and, well, the rest is history.”

              “So they don’t like fae. Why don’t we just leave then?” Joe demanded.

              “Because,” Pete bared his teeth slightly, the gleam in his eyes making Patrick shrink back slightly. “We haven’t done anything wrong, and I’d like a word with them. And much like humans can step on spiders,” his eerie, too bright grin widened, “Nymphs aren’t really that much of a challenge.”

              “I think we should just try to get out of here,” Patrick said, still staring Pete down. Pete made a face at him, but Patrick ploughed on. “Look, this stuff wants us to leave, I say we leave.”

              “And I say if it’s going to fuck with us then it had better start explaining why,” Pete growled. “Nymphs have a vendetta against fae, sure, but this is farther than too far.”

              “I agree with Pete,” Joe said, and Patrick turned to stare at him in betrayal. Joe met his gaze briefly and shrugged.

              “Look, if this thing isn’t going to let us out, maybe we have to confront it,” he said. “Even if we make it to the main road that’s still miles and miles into town, lots of trees on either side. I think this might be our only option.”

              “Beats running away,” Greta agreed. Everyone was nodding along, and Patrick gave up.

              “Okay,” he said, “Let’s just get this over with then, shall we?”

              Directly in front of the arrow was a small path, well trodden but extraordinarily thin. Deer trail, he could remember it being called, carving a path through the trees and bramble but barely wide enough for them to walk single file. As they ventured, yet again, into the forest, Patrick kept feeling the edges of bushes rubbing against his sides, just bare and brittle twigs, but it felt strangely invasive and discomforting nonetheless.

              For the first time that night, the trees were completely still and the night was dead silent as they walked. There was not even the comforting sound of twigs and leaves being snapped underfoot due to the thick layer of snow cushioning the ground, new enough that it didn’t crunch as they walked over it. Pete led the group, the one small utility flashlight held out in front of him seeming pathetically insignificant to Patrick. The moonlight scattered through the thick branches and fell in haphazard patterns on the ground. No animals made any noise. Patrick stumbled and ended up with a trickle of snow melting down inside his coat sleeve.

              Unable to stand the tension any longer, Patrick pushed forward through the others until he was walking just behind Pete, the trail too small to have them walking side by side.

              “You have a plan?” Patrick asked him. Pete shrugged.

              “What do the fae do to, you know, step on the wood nymphs?” Patrick asked, referring to the spider metaphor uncertainly. Pete made a face in response.

              “Well, that depends on the fae,” he said. He pushed a low hanging branch out of the way, and to Patrick’s relief, it didn’t fight back. “The original reason the nymphs and fae had issues was because fae could do some of this stuff too.” He bit his lip again, chewing on it nervously. “Not the same way, of course. The nymphs are, like, one with the trees, or something, but fae, mature fae, that is, can sort of, um, charmspeak the trees. And generally, charmspeak is kind of an override for everything else.”

              Patrick’s eyes widened, stumbling over a root that was peeking through the snow. “You can charmspeak the trees?”

              “I can’t,” Pete clarified, “But mature fae can.”

              “When do fae reach maturity?” Patrick asked.

              “Round about the century mark,” Pete said, not looking at Patrick. Patrick felt like someone had kicked him in the chest, though he couldn’t place why.

              “How long do fae live?” he asked. He felt like he already knew the answer before Pete asked.

              “Forever,” Pete said shortly. “More or less.”

              “Oh,” Patrick said. “So, um, okay, you are twenty-seven, right?”

              “Yes!” Pete sounded indignant. “Jesus, yes. That’s why I can’t do that much.”

              “This isn’t that much?” Patrick grumbled, but Pete continued like he hadn’t heard.

              “Full fae can do much more than charmspeak and aura reading,” he said as calmly as if he were lecturing Patrick on a literature movement. More calmly, for Pete, who always got way too jazzed about the modernist era. “They also have an affinity for nature. They can charmspeak more than just humans, like I said, but usually they sort of specialize on one aspect of nature. Every fae bloodline is different. You met the ice queen in England, who has a natural connection with snow. There’s a line of fae in the Pacific Islands that has a connection with lightning. And of course, that’s part of why they’re all scouting me. No new fae have been created in so long, and they don’t know what I’ll connect with. But anyway, they have the nature affinity, and then really powerful fae can cast glamours.”

              “You say that like I know what it is,” Patrick laughed nervously, puffs of his breath making white clouds appear and dissipate in front of them. Pete grinned at him, but it was a dark smile.

              “Glamours are like… they make people see things that aren’t there,” he said.

              “They make people hallucinate?”

              “I guess, yeah.”

              “Glad I met you so young,” Patrick laughed. Pete laughed too, a little bit lighter, and it felt like the darker moment had passed.

              “So, if you can’t make the trees turn on them, what are you going to do?” Patrick asked.

              “I’ll figure it out when we get there,” Pete said, and Patrick felt a heavy gloom sinking back in. They were completely doomed, he decided.

              Pete’s breath caught suddenly, and he stopped dead in his tracks, holding one hand and a canister of something out, causing Patrick to bump into him.

              “Up there,” Pete said, though he didn’t need to say anything. Patrick could easily see the clearing spread out in front of them, a perfect circle in the center of all of the trees, flooded with moonlight. The circle began to fill as they watched, dozens of ghostly, transparent silvery girls filling the clearing. In the center of them, a larger transparent creature was forming, with a dull greenish glow all around her.

              “There’s a lot of them,” Patrick noted.

              “There’s one for every tree in the forest, these are just the important ones,” Pete said.

              “Oh, well then!” Patrick hissed, but Pete ignored him and stepped forward into the clearing, chin held high. He thrust his shoulders back, and even as the rest of them crept out into the space after him, Pete clearly commanded the center of the stage, as always. He looked important and magnanimous, the kind of person you could vote for or go to war over. _Calamitous_.

              “So,” Pete said cheerfully, looking up at the huge figure in the center. “Um, I know there’s usually more formality to this, but what the fuck?”

              The wispy, feminine figure looked taken aback.

              “ _First a breach of the law, and now this disrespect?_ ” she said, her voice like the whistling of wind through the trees. “ _Why should we not strike you dead?_ ”

              “What breach of the law?” Pete demanded.

              “ _The treaty was made with your court nearly a thousand years ago_ ,” the whispery voice said, coming from all around Patrick, though he knew it belonged to the shape in the middle. He tried to focus on her face, but it was too insubstantial, too changing, and it strained his eyes to focus on it. “ _No fae shall set foot in our forests, and we shall never leave them_.”

              “Well, fantastic treaty!” Pete yelled up at her. “Only I wasn’t there! I don’t belong to any court, and you’ve been attacking not only me, but six innocents completely unprovoked.”

              “ _They chopped us apart for firewood!_ ” one of the smaller ghostly figures cried. Pete rolled his eyes.

              “You’ve taken your fair share of blood from us,” he said. His fingers were curling at his sides, and his eyes were sparking with gold. “Now give me one good reason not to kill you. I beg of you.”

              “ _We will take revenge on your court_ ,” the whispering, windy voice said, but it quavered.

              “I said I have no court!” Pete screamed. “A better reason!”

              “ _You can’t kill us!_ ” it insisted. Pete pulled out a box of matches and his eyes gleamed.

              “I will light them up and tell the fire to not stop burning until your forest is ashes,” he said. “Try. Again.”

              Patrick felt the sting across his stomach before he heard it, the creaking of wood as a branch, for the second time that day, wrapped around his stomach. He reached for his knife immediately, but the tree was too fast, yanking him high up into the night sky in a sickeningly quick motion that made him feel like he left his stomach on the ground below him. His chest tightened when all he could feel underneath his feet was air, and he was too shocked even to cry out. Thankfully, none of the others dragged up in the air had the same train of thought, and most of them were yelling pretty loudly.

              “ _We will snap them in half_ ,” the voice snarled. The clearing began to glow gold, reflecting off of the incorporeal bodies of the nymphs and acting almost as lights of their own.

              “Big mistake,” Pete said. From as high up as he was, Patrick could barely see Pete lighting a match and leaning in to whisper something to it before throwing it to the ground where it shot up in a blaze.

              One of the nymphs began screaming instantly, her voice like wind howling, like a tornado as she fell to the ground, hands clawing at her ghostly face.

              “Now let them down and **_let us leave!_** ” Pete screamed, wind roaring all around him.

              Patrick didn’t hear if the main nymph responded as he was lowered to the ground, what with the screaming of the wind and the smaller nymph, but within moments he was being released, falling onto the snowy ground briefly before jumping to his feet. Pete turned and said “ **Stop** ” in a sharp voice to the fire as he kicked snow onto it, then turned back to the main nymph.

              “We’re leaving now,” Pete said. “You’re going to clear off the road for us. And if I ever hear of you attacking unprovoked again, I’ll be back,” he growled, and turned around, ushering the others out. The moment they were out of sight, they were sprinting, and the return trip seemed to take half the length of the way there. They dove into Andy’s car and peeled forward. The trees that had laid down in front of them lifted up like enormous fans as they drove forward, clearing their path out of the woods as they drove. The whole thing would have been beautiful and breathtaking if Patrick hadn’t been holding his breath and clutching his bloody stomach.

              A few minutes after they hit the main road, Pete slowly released a deep breath, letting his eyes slide shut.

              “I can’t believe that worked,” he laughed, almost hysterical.

              “Didn’t you say that only mature fae could do that?” Patrick asked. Pete giggled as he nodded, his eyes still shut.

              “I didn’t charmspeak the fire,” he giggled. “I poured out half a can of lighter fluid onto the tree before I talked to them. I was just bluffing.”

              “Jesus Christ,” Joe shuddered. “I’m really glad you didn’t tell us that.”

              “Wouldn’t have had the chance anyways,” Pete shrugged. “I’m just glad they fell for it, because if they had held out much longer- hey, is that a Holiday Inn sign? How do you guys feel about a hotel?”

              “Yes!” Andy said, swerving across two lanes and into the exit lane in a blink. Ashlee let out a tiny, hoarse laugh.

              “No more camping?” she asked.

              “No more camping,” Patrick said. “Ever.”

              It took a fair bit of charmspeak to let them check into the hotel, as it was five in the morning by the time they got there, but Pete got them a few rooms to pass out in. Patrick followed him into his room purely out of habit, and when the room only had one bed, he shrugged and crawled under the covers next to Pete, who for once was out in an instant. His face looked so much more lined in his sleep, and Patrick instinctively pulled the heavy brocade covers up to Pete’s chin and tucked them in around him until he looked safer, somehow.

              Patrick curled in close to Pete’s warmth under the duvet. He had a feeling that things were going to change soon, from the way Ashlee and Pete looked at each other to the stress riding on the reception of the upcoming album. For now, the radiator in the hotel hummed as it spat out heat, and they had survived something impossible yet again. If anything came of Pete inviting a girl to move in with him, or Victoria’s number burning hot on a piece of paper in his back pocket, slipped to him as they checked in, or any number of frightening monsters stalking them, they would deal with that as it came. Together.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks so much for reading this chapter, and I hope you enjoyed my little halloween inspired october chapter! If you couldn't tell, I drew a lot of inspiration from Evil Dead and Blair Witch (also, if you like scary movies, you should totally see Blair Witch. the 2016 movie, not the 90's one. Absolutely loved it 8/10) but I tried to take my own sort of spin on it.
> 
> If it feels like the first couple of chapters have been filler, I apologize, and I promise we're about to get into the nitty gritty of the plot for this season. I'm so excited for the season to come, and I hope you all are too, so try and bear with me for now.
> 
> Also, a sidenote, I am going to be doing nanowrimo with an original work, so while there will still be a November chapter, it might be a little bit shorter than usual, but I swear it'll still happen.
> 
> Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting, but a special thanks to my beta, who keeps everything in line and gives you a much more polished story than I could alone. <3
> 
> If you want to see more content, updated information about the story, or just awesome content other people have made for this universe, check out thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com
> 
> Chapter title by Stevie Wonder


	4. Thunderstruck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys wake up with no memory of what they did the night previously and get told that they have to compete in a magical tournament for the enjoyment of rich hunters. The boys don't like being told what to do.

 

              Joe Trohman was not in the habit of waking up in a place he did not recognize. Certainly, he enjoyed parties, a little illicit recreation from time to time, but he didn’t like to be blackout drunk, and more to the point, with his werewolf speed-healing, he couldn’t get blackout drunk without trying very, very hard. Being high never made him lose sense of his surroundings, and even being on the road, he always liked to know where they were going, so he was never taken by surprise when he woke up somewhere new in the morning.

              This long-time streak of being quite self-aware made waking up somewhere unknown one cold January morning a particularly nasty shock.

              When Joe awoke, he felt perfectly normal, free of any headaches or other injuries, but when he opened his eyes to a very dim, bluish lighting and an overwhelming scent of lavender, his stomach lurched as he realized that he had no memory of the place he was waking up in, and on top of that, the room he was in was deeply incongruent. He was curled up on what appeared to be very soft moss, but surrounded by plain white walls- five plain white walls, as opposed to four, making the room into a perfect pentagon. In the very center of the room was a large tree trunk, its roots stretching tendril-like across the floor. Joe himself was curled up against the root of one as he sat up to inspect the room further.

              The tree was just barely contained in the room, all its branches seeming unhappily forced to go no further than the ceiling, as the branches spread across the ceiling in a manner almost identical to the roots on the floor. Misty looking pale blue orbs hung from some of the boughs, filling the room with a soft and very technological looking glow. There were not, Joe realized as glanced around the room quickly, any doors.

              Joe sprung to his feet and looked around, finding Andy in another dimly lit corner of the room, and Patrick right against the trunk of the tree. Joe walked a circle around the tree once, stepping lightly on the moss and making no noise at all, and soon found that Pete was not in the room. It took only a moment of thinking before it clicked.

              “Fucking fae,” Joe snarled, and then let his frustrations bubble up inside him, trapped and helpless as he was, and he let out a loud, earsplitting howl.

              Twenty minutes later (or, Joe assumed it had been twenty minutes, but he had no way of measuring time in the room) he, Andy, and Patrick had scoured their strange pentagonal cell block and found absolutely nothing. No trap door hidden amongst the roots, no purchase or cracks in the walls, and most concerningly, no visible source of food or water.

              “So this is, what?” Patrick asked, his voice calm and lighthearted, even though Joe could feel the panic pulsing through the bond from him, “Some kind of fae holding cell or something?”

              “Something like that,” Joe muttered darkly.

              “That doesn’t make any sense,” Andy said, biting his lip. Whoever had taken them had taken Andy and Patrick’s glasses and Patrick’s hat, and the two of them looked strangely vulnerable without them. “I mean, fae can’t do that. We would have had to come of our own free will, and I don’t remember that.”

              “What do you remember?” Joe asked. Andy opened his mouth to answer, paused, then frowned. On Joe’s other side, he could see Patrick making the same internal deliberations.

              “Nothing,” Patrick said after a minute. “I mean, obviously, I remember who I am, but- nothing specific, nothing recent.”

              “We went into Seelie court of our own free will and forgot about it?” Andy asked.

              “Best explanation I can think of,” Joe said. “Still not a great one, but what else? There’s a big ass tree and Pete’s missing. Fae all over it.”

              “Pete!” Patrick gasped, his hand shooting out and grabbing Joe’s arm. “Can you still feel him through the bond?”

              “Sort of,” Joe said. He had already felt around in his brain, and Pete was still somewhere, still alive, but not feeling any particularly intense emotions, wherever he was. “Probably asleep or drugged right now.”

              Patrick’s nervous expression deepened, and he ran a hand through his thin hair, pacing back and forth over the tree roots. The ground was rich and springy beneath the moss, and though Joe had tried digging into it, he found nothing but dirt as he dug down deeper.

              “So we’re thinking we’re locked up in Seelie Court and being held hostage until Pete joins up or comes up with some other plan to get us out?” Patrick said.

              “That’s the running theory,” Joe agreed.

              “The fae aren’t really up to date on that whole ‘no means no’ thing, huh?” Andy asked dryly. Joe snorted once, then flopped down with his back against the tree trunk, laid his head in his hands and rubbing his temples.

              Time passed excruciatingly slowly. Every now and then one of them would try and start talking about what they last remembered and fizzle out halfway through. Joe, for his part, remembered having dinner with his family, remembered an award show the band went to, and remembered flying to New York to spend a few nights with Marie, but he had the curious sensation that that last memory had happened quite a few nights ago, and he couldn’t recall any of the smaller things that had happened in between.

              Andy busied himself for a moment trying to dig into the earth, but found after digging three feet down very rapidly that he eventually could dig no further. It looked like there was more dirt, but none of them could touch it, their hands bouncing immediately back up like a forcefield was in the way. Patrick, for his part, worried about Pete, if his mental link was any indication of his overall mood.

              And Pete, wherever he was, still wasn’t even awake. It was making Joe nervous.

              Hours passed like this, and eventually Joe realized that the food thing was going to be a real problem, and worse, a problem that they definitely couldn’t do anything about.

              “We can’t eat or drink anything here,” he said miserably.

              “No shit, Sherlock,” Patrick said. “Unless you’re desperate enough to start ripping up the moss, because I know I’m not.”

              “No, I mean, even if they bring food, we can’t eat any,” Joe said, absently tearing the moss to shreds between his fingers, “Fae food. We’d be trapped here forever if we eat or drink.”

              “They can’t keep us here forever if we don’t eat,” Andy said, but he didn’t sound completely certain. He glanced around at them and pulled his legs in a little closer to his chest where he was sitting.

              Time dragged on. The most exciting thing Joe could think of to do was watch the undulating light of the blue orbs hung from the trees. He had almost begun to drift off out of pure boredom when suddenly there was a clanging noise, like a gong being struck, and even as Joe started to his feet, the large tree trunk folded out to reveal a hollow metal interior. From the tree, a sharp featured, dark haired woman stepped out, and the tree closed behind her with a soft mechanical click.

              “Good morning, gentlemen, I see you’re all awake,” she said, jotting something down on a clipboard. Joe noted at once that she looked and smelled very human, which was a little disconcerting.

              “Now,” she said, “If you would be so kind as to tell me your full name, age, and species, we’ll get you down to breakfast and into the first round.”

              Joe blinked at her slowly before shaking his head.

              “I’m sorry, what?” he said. She smiled blithely.

              “Name, age, and species,” she repeated. Joe thought about it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of ‘What harm could it really do?’ versus ‘This seems magical and suspicious.’ He decided, ultimately, that not knowing the harm did not make it any less real, and before he spoke he was already shaking his head.

              “Why don’t you tell me who you are first?” he suggested in a mock sweet voice.

              “Emily, Emily Briarwood, daughter of the late James Briarwood, current hunter in charge of the Shadowgate Arena. But all of this,” she gestured around to the strange room, “Will be explained to you downstairs.”

              “And if I don’t tell you my name, age, and species?” Joe asked coldly.

              Lightning fast, she had a small, pure silver gun aimed at Joe’s head, and thick plastic walls shot down from the ceiling around the two of them so that Andy and Patrick couldn’t reach them.

              “Name, age, and species?” she asked again. Joe felt hot with anger, but he managed to snarl out his response.

              “Joe Trohman, Twenty-three. Werewolf.”

              She gave him a tight smile, and the walls dissolved again. She made a note on her clipboard, untucking it from her arm after putting her gun away, then turned to Andy.

              “Andy Hurley, twenty-seven,” he paused and eyed her gun. “Human.”

              “Liar,” she said, though she didn’t sound particularly angry about it. “We do not take humans.”

              Joe could feel the stunned leap in Patrick’s emotions through the bond, and they made eye contact across the room. Patrick’s eyebrows were raised in shock and questioning, and Joe gave him a small shrug.

              “Half-human,” Andy amended.

              “And half what?” Emily asked.

              “Vampire,” Andy admitted. She nodded, marked something down, and then turned to Patrick. He gulped.

              “Patrick Stump, twenty-three, human,” he said and she rolled her eyes, looking a little angry.

              “I told you, we do not take humans,” she said.

              “Then you must have made some mistake,” Patrick insisted. “I’m not- I mean, to the best of my knowledge- how do you know we’re not human?” he stuttered.

              “Scan upon entry. None of our contestants are one hundred percent human,” she said, though she sounded unsure. “Sometimes prolonged physical contact with a non-human can confuse the scanners, though. Are you married to a non-human?”

              “NO,” Patrick half-shouted. Joe snorted a little, and Emily frowned.

              “You don’t look like you’re lying,” she admitted, “But I can’t be sure. I’ll just mark you down for mixed-slash-other, how about that?”

              “But I’m not!” Patrick protested. “What are you even marking this down for?”

              “I told you, it will all be explained in due time,” she said. “Now, I must be off, lots more cataloguing to do before the games start. Someone will bring you downstairs shortly.”

              Emily stepped back into the tree and shut it behind her, leaving them bewildered in the dark room.

              “Why does she think I’m not human?” Patrick asked immediately. His eyes were shining in the semi-darkness, and Joe couldn’t quite decipher what the emotion was that was coming from him, but it felt a little like fear.

              “You heard what she said; prolonged physical contact can set it off,” Joe said with a shrug. “It’s probably just because you’re around us so much. In any case, we’ve got bigger problems to worry about right now.”

              “Yeah,” Andy jumped in, “Have you ever heard of the Shadowgate Arena?”

              “No, but it doesn’t exactly sound welcoming, does it?” Joe said. “Damn, we’ve got to get out of here, that girl wasn’t fae.”

              “So if it isn’t fae, what is it?” Andy asked.

              Suddenly, one of the walls slid upwards into the ceiling, revealing an almost identical wall behind it with a large door marked “exit.”

              “PLEASE EXIT THE DORM AND PROCEED DOWNSTAIRS,” a brash male voice echoed too loudly through the room. There was a five second pause, and the too loud message was repeated. Hands cupped over his ears, Joe jerked his head towards the exit, and the others nodded, following him as he pushed open the door.

              They exited into a painfully bright hallway, all white and lit up with fluorescent lights, and the hallway led them to an industrial looking staircase. The three of them started walking down, though after a few floors, they began running into other people. Some of them looked human and normal, some were obviously vampires or wendigos, and some were creatures Joe had never seen or imagined before: girls with antlers and tiny winged creatures and what looked rather like a sphinx.

              No one on the staircase spoke to one another, and Joe felt a little better seeing that everyone else looked just as confused and scared as he and his band did.

              Joe lost track of how many flights of stairs they went down, but at the very bottom they emptied out into a large, all white cafeteria. There were dozens of round tables scattered across the room, and at the head of it was a long counter filled with warming pans of food. Joe’s stomach growled louder than his senses that were telling him not to eat anything.

              “This probably isn’t a fae thing, so we should be good to eat,” Joe suggested, and thankfully, Patrick and Andy nodded.

              Unfortunately, the food also tasted like it came from a high school cafeteria, but Joe was famished, and didn’t much care what the quality was. The three of them managed to find a table alone to eat, and they began discussing again where they might be.

              “She said she was a hunter,” Patrick reminded them in a low voice. “Is it like those guys who kidnapped you a while back?”

              “Doubtful,” Joe said, but he frowned. “I mean, maybe? I’ve just never heard of hunters doing anything this elaborate before. Usually they’re like trophy hunters, just trying to get fangs and pelts. Whatever this is, it’s massive.”

              “Makes you wonder why we haven’t heard of it,” Andy said darkly.

              They were nearly done with their food, and the amount of people entering the cafeteria had slowed to a trickle when a tall man stood up on a table and cleared his throat.

              “Welcome, my friends, to Shadowgate Arena,” he said. The room had gone silent for him, but as he said this, a number of people made noises of fear or outrage. He held up his hands, and the room went silent again.

              “For those of you that do not know, the Shadowgate Arena is a center for magical entertainment, styled after the Colosseum in Rome. And like the gladiators of old, you will, today, have a chance to fight for honor, glory, and freedom.

              “Each and every one of you will have the chance to fight. If you win your fight, you will advance to the next battle. The winner will receive an amount of prize money, and immediate, unconditional freedom. All those who do not win will be released nearby, and the spectators will have a chance to, ah, recapture you.”

              “Killing is discouraged, but not forbidden. If you would all proceed through that door,” he pointed across the room, “You will be taken to a separate section of the stands. From there your names will be called when it is your turn.”

              As the man left, Joe felt his veins become icy. He was wide eyed and his muscles felt strangely brittle as he tried to force himself to think.

              It wasn’t as though he was that afraid for himself. Even if he wouldn’t win, he had faith that he wouldn’t die. He might even stand a decent shot, and when it came to running away, he was more than fast enough. Andy was at least as good at all that as he was, probably better.

              Patrick would not meet his eyes.

***

              The arena itself was beautiful. The moment Andy walked in he was stunned by it. It was designed to look like a coliseum, but was also fairly high tech, with huge glass walls that separated the floor from the audience that reminded him of an ice rink. The section of the seats they were led to was at one of the short ends of the long oval, raised up high so that they would have a good view of everything that went on.

              Their section of the stands also only had one visible exit after the door from the cafeteria closed to them, and that was onto the arena floor. From there, there was another exit on the opposite side of the enormous open space.

              “What do you think?” Joe asked bleakly.

              “More entertaining than soccer,” Patrick said lightly. “Who do you think pays to see this kinda thing anyway? I mean, I know there are rednecks and shit that go watch dog fights, but how do you even find out about something like this?”

              “Rich, sadistic fucks,” Joe said. “Same people that buy wolf pelts and vampire fangs and all that bullshit. Horrible, affluent, sociopathic-”

              “You okay?” Patrick asked. “You seem a little tense.”

              Andy and Joe made disbelieving eye contact.

              “What?” Patrick said. “You heard them. It’s not to the death. You just tap out early, seem worthless, no crazy hunter even wants to snatch you up, and there you go. We’ll leave at the end of the day. I mean, come on, they can’t make us fight.”

              “It’s a nice thought,” Joe said. “But I don’t think they’ll take kindly to us tapping out,” he continued, eyes darting over to the edges of participant seating, where hunters dressed all in black lined the outside of them with large guns and stony faces.

              “You’re too worried,” Patrick said. “Loosen up.”

              Joe glared at him. Andy let his eyes drift around until he saw someone that he thought looked familiar. The kid lit up at the sight of Andy and began climbing up the rows until he tumbled at Andy’s feet, grinning widely.

              “Holy shit, you’re Andy Hurley, aren’t you?” he said, his whole face gleaming with a star struck smile.

              “Yeah, that’s me,” Andy said bracingly. The guy’s eyes popped wider as he saw Joe and Patrick sitting next to him, and he let out a delighted little laugh.

              “But that’s Joe and Patrick and- oh man, you’re Fall Out Boy!” he said, grinning hugely.

              “Minus one,” Patrick said with a nod. “What’s your name?”

              “Alex. I’m in a band-” he began.

              “All Time Low!” Patrick said with a pleased smile. “Hey, wow, pleasure to meet you! Well, I mean, bad circumstances, but…”

              “Hah!” Alex was grinning hugely, and Andy did think he vaguely remembered Pete talking about the band. The music hadn’t stuck with him, so maybe the band was memorable for some other reason.

              “The one from Baltimore?” Joe asked. “The wolf pack?”

              “You’ve heard of us?” Alex laughed. He still looked stunned and delighted, but now also a tiny bit embarrassed.

              “Yeah, loved the music, man,” Patrick said. Alex looked completely delighted.

              “So hey, do you remember how you got here?” Andy asked him. Alex wrinkled up his nose.

              “Not exactly,” he said. “I’ve been trying to remember, but all I can remember is someone grabbing me and then a really strong floral smell. How nuts is that?”

              “Lavender,” Joe said distractedly. “But what the hell does that mean?”

              Before they could discuss it further, all the lights went down in the arena, and a booming voice roared from above them.

              “Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the Shadowgate Arena! Our first contestants are both vampires, so give it up for Ernest Morgenstern and Abby Williams!”

              His eyesight still quite impressive in the dark, Andy could just make out some of the hunters grabbing two people sitting in front of him and dragging them forward, shoving them through the door while saying something to them that he couldn’t make out.

              Heavy lights turned on on the floor as the two of them, an middle aged man and a teenage girl walked to the middle of the arena. They looked frightened, but the girl bared her fangs, and pulled into a crouch.

              “May the best creature win!” the loudspeakers roared, and Abby pounced onto her opponent.

              Andy was directly involved with every fight between magical creatures he could remember, so it was very strange seeing one take place. The full vampires, so much stronger than Andy could imagine, moved lightning fast, striking out at each other then falling back to circle each other, crouched low and snarling.

              The fight lasted only a couple of minutes, after which Abby tore the man’s throat. Andy lurched forward in shock as a chunk of the man’s flesh was thrown across the arena, splattering against the glass wall. He sank to his knees, hands clasped over his neck and gasping. A bell clanged above them and Abby stood up. Hunters ran out and carried Ernest away, and Abby stood tall, walking through the now open door on the other side of the arena.

              “Well,” Patrick said faintly, “She seemed eager.” He looked faintly green, and Andy didn’t feel much better.

              “Eager is one word for it,” Joe said.

              “Congratulations, Abby!” the announcer roared. “Up next, we’ve got the banshee Erin Mehnke and the fae Eleanor Greenfield!”

              Watching was torturous. Andy would almost rather be fighting just to get it over with rather than watching people sitting in the stands with them pour out into the arena, two at a time, and all end up grievously injured. So many of them were horribly outmatched, a fully-grown vampire against a siren when there was no water, for one. The whole thing was unbearably cruel, and all Andy wanted to do was sprint out and help, but he knew better than to fight. He was so horribly outmatched against everyone, even if he, Patrick, Joe, and Alex all fought, it wouldn’t do much good.

              “You have a plan?” Joe asked some girl sitting in front of them during a particularly long fight. She swung long blond hair over her shoulders as she turned to face him with a condescending glare.

              “I’m going to fight as hard as I can,” she said like it was obvious, flashing particularly sharp fangs. “They’ve had me locked up for so long that this is a relief.”

              “How long have you been here?” Joe asked. Andy leaned in to listen as well.

              “Obviously, I haven’t been here long,” she said, still condescending. “But what else do you do with your slaves once they get boring, right?”

              “What are you talking about?” Joe asked.

              “What are _you_ talking about?” she asked. “Don’t play dumb. Hunters sell their leftovers to the arena. That’s how it always worked.”

              “We just woke up here,” Joe said, gesturing to himself and Andy. Her eyes widened slightly, and then she shrugged.

              “Maybe they captured you recently,” she said with a shrug. “Whatever. You’d better bring your a-game, or you can kiss your freedom goodbye.”

              Joe turned to Andy, who shrugged. Patrick’s plan didn’t sound that ridiculous, but then again, he was human. Maybe they needed a different strategy.

              “Next up!” the announcer roared, to great cheers from the crowd, a crowd that had been steadily growing larger as the fights went on. “Patrick Stump and Derrick Reigns!”

              The crowd buzzed, possibly because he didn’t say species, but it was all indistinct. Andy turned to Patrick who shrugged, walking slowly down the row and out into the arena. One of the hunters caught him by the arm before he could walk out and said something in his ear. Patrick stiffened, then continued out into the arena.

              Andy felt like he might pass out.

              “What is he, anyway?” Alex asked.

              “Human,” Joe said bleakly, his eyes trained, like Andy’s, on Patrick as he walked out into the center. To Andy’s surprise, Patrick didn’t look remotely frightened as he stood there, rather, he looked harsh and determined.

              His opponent, however, was enormous. Derrick was at least a foot taller than Patrick and more than twice as wide, all of it muscle. He looked more like a comic book character than a real person, and he cracked his knuckles ominously.

              “May the best creature win!” the announcer cried, and Derrick let out a loud, rumbling roar as his skin began turning into cracked stone.

              “A golem,” the girl in front of them gasped. “Magician must’ve wanted to get rid of one.”

              Derrick swung his literal boulder of a fist at Patrick, who ducked out of the way of it easily. Andy clung to the edge of his seat, feeling fiercely grateful that they were training for fighting these days. Derrick was moving clunkily; though he could probably crush a human, Patrick dodged him fairly easily.

              The fight dragged on for far too long. The arduous seconds turned into minutes, and after five minutes had past, Andy could tell the crowd was getting angry. Patrick looked tired, but was still holding up well when it began raining in the arena.

              The golem immediately let out a pained shriek, throwing its stone hands above its head, and Patrick jerked back too, covering his eyes and letting out a pained cry as well. The rain had a strange rainbow glint to it, almost metallic, somehow.

              A few droplets fell over the side of the glass, and one of them landed on Alex’s hand with a loud and painful sounding sizzle. He covered his mouth to stop himself from crying out, but he still made a groaning noise. Andy turned away from Patrick for a moment to look at Alex, who looked like he was about to start crying.

              “What is it?” Andy asked urgently.

              “Silver,” Alex whimpered, pulling it off of his hand. “It must be made in pellets or something, because it’s not melted, but it’s still hot.”

              Andy stared closer at the water. It looked like it was a combination of water and silver pellets, and guessing by the heat coming still emanating from the chunk of silver, the water was probably hot.

              “Jesus,” Andy said, staring out at the arena.

              The golem was definitely faring worse, screaming a guttural scream as it flailed its stone arms, but Patrick wasn’t moving as fast anymore either, trying to duck and evade the golem’s grasp while also holding his arms over his head looked significantly more difficult.

              Andy leaned in closer, and to his relief, it looked like the golem was melting, almost. The creature looked like a sandcastle that had been left in the rain as it began to sag, but it was angrier than ever. It swung again, this time catching Patrick in the ribs so that he flew into one of the glass walls. The audience let out a loud “Oooh!” as Patrick tumbled to the ground and the golem stomped towards him.

              Patrick laid on the ground catching his breath for too long, and he seemed to realize it as Derrick was almost on top of him. It lifted both of its heavy stone fists up to bring them down on Patrick and crush him, and Patrick took the last free second to dive underneath the stone legs.

              The audience was screaming, but Joe and Andy were dead silent as Patrick scooped up a handful of the tiny silver pellets that had fallen on the ground, making a face at the pain of holding the hot metal. Just as the golem turned around, Patrick threw the handful as hard as he could into its chest.

              With a loud and horrible howl, the golem fell down and curled in on himself, seemingly unable to stand. After a few seconds, the clanging noise went off, and the rain stopped.

              “CONGRATULATIONS, PATRICK!” the announcer roared, and Patrick threw Joe and Andy one last glance as he walked over through the door on the far side.

              Andy wondered if they were going to clean the silver off the arena floor before the next pair was called, but the announcer began speaking again.

              “Next up, vampire Andy Hurley and werewolf Joe Trohman!” he yelled.

              Andy kept sitting for a moment too long, certain he had heard it wrong. It wasn’t until a hunter yanked him out of his seat that he realized what was happening and he began to panic.

              He wanted to say something to Joe and quickly, but they were getting pulled apart, Alex in the middle looking like he was watching a train wreck. Andy tried to calm himself. No one had died yet, and in any case, they didn’t have to fight. They could just stand there and wait till they got bored, or better yet, one of them could pretend to lose, and it would be fine, he thought.

              One of the hunters pulled Andy roughly to the side and whispered in his ear: “I’m sure your daughter will be very grateful if you give it your all right now. But of course, I’m sure Carmilla will understand the consequences to her if we think you aren’t trying your absolute hardest.”

              As the words hit Andy, he had to use all of his willpower to walk forward robotically, pale faced. Joe looked bad too, but he was nothing compared to Andy, who just heard “Carmilla” being said in the hunter’s awful voice over and over and over again.

              They faced each other in the center of the arena, the bright lights already too hot on Andy’s skin. He couldn’t hear the announcer’s words for the roaring in his ears, but he did see Joe mouthing the word “Sorry.”

              Andy had no idea if the threat was empty or if Carmilla was really hidden somewhere in the bowels of this horrible place, but his daughter wasn’t the kind of thing he took chances with. The moment he heard the loud clang, so soft and barely audible in Andy’s own ears, he launched himself at Joe, throwing him to the ground.

              The fight was horribly tilted in Andy’s favor. The ground was littered with silver, and Joe’s face was contorted the minute they fell to the ground. Andy wrapped his hands around Joe’s neck, pressing his thumbs into Joe’s windpipe. He wanted to end this as quickly as possible, cut off his supply of air so that he would be unconscious before Andy had to do anything painful. Luckily, the silver combined with Andy’s strength seemed to do the trick, and Joe’s struggles became feeble all too quickly.

              The minute his eyes fluttered shut Andy let go and stepped back, letting out a deep sigh of relief when he saw Joe’s chest moving up and down. He didn’t even hear the announcer, he just walked across the arena, trying to keep himself together as he walked through the door and sat on the winning side next to Patrick.

              “Is he-?” Patrick began, and Andy nodded.

              “He’s alive,” he said. His throat sounded horribly raw. He wanted Patrick to say something, tell him he had done the right thing or at least that he understood, but Patrick, terribly burnt and ragged looking up close, didn’t say anything.

              “I have a feeling that getting out may not be as easy as I thought it would be.” Patrick said.

***

              When Pete woke up late in the afternoon, he felt hungover. His throat was dry, his head was throbbing, and every part of him ached. No, that wasn’t quite right. All of his skin being touched by sheets or clothes felt like it was on fire. A breeze blew over him that felt like knives.

              Pete forced his sticky eyes open and felt a jolt of shock run through him. He could feel a breeze because a large part of his bedroom roof and wall had been blasted apart, and his bed sat on the edge of a newly made, three stories up precipice. Pete jumped off of his bed and onto the floor, eyes wide and gasping. The broken edges of his floor and ceiling were charred black.

              “What the fuck?” Pete whispered. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw something move, and when he turned to look he saw a pair of golden eyes blink out of sight in his mirror. His stomach flipped over, and, glancing once more at the wreckage, ran out of his room.

              Pete called Patrick even as he was running down his stairs. His stomach twisted anxiously as soon as it went to voicemail, and he hung up before leaving a message. He called Andy, then Joe, and when neither of them picked up either, he called Patrick again.

              Pete ran his hand through his hair and winced at how much it hurt- his skin felt like it was burning when it touched anything but stagnant air, and his heart was hammering so hard he was losing breath standing still. Hands shaking, he called Gabe, who thankfully picked up on the first ring.

              “Hey, Pete, listen, we have to talk-” Gabe began.

              “Can you come over?” Pete asked. His voice sounded like a wreck, and Gabe simply said yes.

              In under twenty minutes (a feat of magic far more incredible than charmspeak, Pete thought, given LA traffic) Gabe was in his living room, his eyes the size of saucers.

              “Your house blew up,” Gabe said.

              “I noticed. That’s my bedroom,” Pete said, pointing up. Gabe gaped at him.

              “What happened?” he asked.

              “I don’t know!” Pete wailed. “I have no idea what happened but Patrick and Andy and Joe aren’t answering and I think something’s wrong!”

              “Okay, just breathe for a second,” Gabe commanded him. Pete unwillingly took a shallow breath. “You have no reason to believe they’re hurt yet, right? Maybe they just aren’t able to answer their phones.”

              “Oh please, Gabe, it’s us!” Pete cried. “When are they not in danger?”

              “Were they even hanging out?” Gabe asked. “It is, you know, the holidays right now. They could just be busy.”

              “Something happened!” Pete yelled. “And it looks like a bomb went off in my room, and-”

              “Hey, okay, it’s okay,” Gabe said, putting his hands on Pete’s shoulders. “It’s gonna be fine.”

              He paused, looking like he wanted to say something more.

              “Spit it out,” Pete sighed.

              “There’s a band in trouble and they want to talk to you,” Gabe said.

              “Jesus, what band?” Pete groaned.

              “All Time Low. The wolf pack from Baltimore? They were out the other day and their lead singer got kidnapped by hunters, they need help getting him back.”

              “How did you hear about this first?”

              “I’m well connected,” Gabe said with a grin. He sobered up quickly. “Do you want to wait for the other guys?”

              “Yeah, maybe,” Pete said. His skin still ached, and he went into the kitchen to get himself some painkillers. “I don’t know what to do.”

              “I can ask around. See if anybody’s seen them,” Gabe suggested. Pete nodded, and Gabe led him back into the living room and sat him down. “In the meantime, if you feel up to it… you should probably call a contractor about whatever happened up there.”

              Pete groaned softly while Gabe started calling people from the other side of the room. His soft chattering filled the room with background noise that made it easier for Pete to calm down and for his brain to quiet.

              “Hey, when did you last see any of them?” Gabe asked Pete after a while, hand blocking covering his phone.

              “Um, haven’t seen Joe and Andy since the award show a week or so back, but Patrick was just visiting last night,” Pete said, fumbling a little over the word “visiting.” Patrick was technically still visiting, as he still paid rent on his apartment in Chicago, but to the best of Pete’s knowledge, he hadn’t been back there in months, and really had only just then returned to Pete’s house because he was done visiting his parents for the holidays.

              “When last night?” Gabe asked.

              “I dunno,” Pete said, his brow furrowing. “I laid down to take a nap at, like, six… I can’t have slept that long…”

              “Six,” Gabe said into the phone. He frowned, nodded. “Uh-huh. Okay. We’ll go check it out. Yeah. Bye.”

              “What’s up?” Pete asked.

              “Patrick and Vicky were on a date last night,” Gabe said. Pete recoiled ever so slightly, but forced his face to stay neutral. “They were out till nine or so when he said he got a text from you and had to come back here.” Gabe was giving Pete a very odd look. “You don’t remember that at all?”

              “No!” Pete said, eyes wide, but he pulled out his phone. He went and checked recently sent messages, and sure enough there was a group message sent to Patrick, Joe, and Andy that said “Come over 911.”

              “I don’t- I don’t remember anything but sleeping last night,” Pete said. He strained to think, but nothing came to him. He had gone to bed in the afternoon in the hopes of curing a headache and couldn’t remember anything between then and when he woke up and saw the golden eyes in the mirror.

              Gabe was quiet for a long time. He went upstairs without Pete, presumably to look at Pete’s room, then came back downstairs looking even more troubled. He called someone else, and Pete looked up contractors in the LA area, wondering how the hell he was going to explain his room when he didn’t even know what happened.

              “Hey, Pete?” Gabe said as soon as they were off the phone. Pete looked up, blinking. “I’m gonna make some dinner, okay?”

              “Uh, sure,” Pete said, shrugging. “Why do you wanna-?”

              “Don’t worry about it too much,” Gabe said, and went into the kitchen. Pete turned on TV, not paying much attention, but feeling like he should be doing something. After a few episodes of something had gone by, Gabe came back out with a plate of baked chicken that smelled very strongly of herbs. Pete coughed a little as he grabbed it.

              “Geez, did you put on enough seasoning?” he asked.

              “Oh, I hope so,” Gabe said. “Eat up.”

              “You made meat for me?” Pete asked.

              “Just eat. Please,” Gabe said. Pete shrugged and started eating, getting about halfway through the meat when his memories came crashing back into him all at once.

              _Pete had woken up in the dark, head fuzzy from napping but headache gone, which was the goal. He was rubbing his eyes when he heard a cool voice in front of him say, very clearly “Curious.”_

_Pete looked up, but he could see nothing in the room. He turned a light on, but still couldn’t see anything there._

_“Are you awake?” the voice asked again, very clearly, like someone was right in front of Pete. Pete flailed out and fell backwards, but nothing was there._

_“Oh, dear,” it said. Pete was still looking around, but he could find no source for the voice. “Well, I am deeply sorry about this.”_

_Before Pete could ask what the voice was sorry about, or work up the courage to say anything at all, the mirror erupted with a bright red glow, and something long and dark wrapped itself around Pete’s wrist._

_Pete was too petrified to scream as he scrambled further away from the mirror and its bright red glow, grabbing his phone and sending one frantic message. He tried to run out of his room, but his door was locked, shut tight against him, and he fell back onto his bed. The glow in the mirror dimmed till there was just a faint red aura around it, and nothing else touched him, but Pete felt very ill as he sat on the edge of his bed, not letting his eyes leave the mirror._

_“Pete?!” Joe called from downstairs. Pete ran to the door and tried to wrench it open, but it wouldn’t budge, and instead he croaked out: “Up here!”_

_The three of them must have all reached his house at roughly the same time, because his whole band came inside, looking concerned._

_“There’s- there’s something in my mirror,” Pete said. The mirror showed no signs of the supernatural now, but Pete knew he hadn’t made it up, hadn’t imagined something like that._

_“What do you mean there’s something-?” Patrick began, when the door was kicked down once more._

_None of them had time to react. Five people in identical black robes were upon them at once. Purple smoke emanated from the hands of them the moment their hands were near enough to the faces of Pete or anyone in his band, knocking them unconscious. They reached Pete last, a girl gripping him by his face._

_“This the one?” she asked._

_“Do not touch him,” the voice in the mirror said, remarkably calm. She nodded and let go, but even as Pete watched one of the robed figures throw something at the wall that blasted it away, she let her hand drift across Pete’s face, and the moment he breathed in the deep purple smoke, he fell back against the bed._

              Pete blinked a few times, and let the plate slide out of his lap and crash onto the floor.

              “Oh, shit, Pete?” Gabe sat down next to him, and Pete stared up at him in shock.

              “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

              “Your memory, I think,” Gabe said, frowning as he stared into Pete’s eyes. “I called Ryan and, well, I mentioned that your room smelled like lavender. He recognized the spell and said that rosemary counteracts it. Works better if you don’t know it’s happening, though, sorry,” Gabe said. “Magic is kinda the opposite of placebo. What did you see?”

              “They got kidnapped by people in cloaks with purple smoke and I really need to buy a new mirror,” Pete growled.

              “People in cloaks and purple smoke?” Gabe asked, frowning deeper.

              “Yeah?” Pete said. “Why, have you heard of them?”

              “Vaguely,” Gabe said. “Around this time every year some hunters and magicians team up to do a sort of gladiator style tournament with magical creatures. It’s usually not a voluntary process.”

              “Where does it take place?” Pete asked, his voice dangerously low.

              “Well, here in LA, but I really don’t think you should-”

              “Call the All Time Low kids and tell them where we’re going,” Pete said as he stood up.

              “Hold up, ‘we’?” Gabe asked.

              “Gabe!”

              “Yeah, okay, I’ll call them.”

              It took too long to drive where Gabe was told the entrance was, on the very far north side of Los Angeles. He told Pete that Bill had told him about it from a friend of a friend who had supposedly come out the victor, and Pete felt sick to his stomach. It was so late in the day, he had slept for so long…

              “Here we go,” Gabe said, turning into a small, sad looking strip mall, home to an aquarium shop, a closed grocery store, and a new age store with a sign that said “Shadowgate” just over the door.

              “Shadowgate?” Pete repeated. “Jesus, creepy name.”

              “Fits the mood,” Gabe said darkly, then checked the radio clock. “All right, I guess we should wait here for the rest of All Time Low, and then-”

              “Are you crazy? There’s no time to wait, we have to go in now,” Pete said. Gabe stared at him.

              “Pete, I really think we should wait,” he said.

              “They’re our backup,” Pete scoffed. “Come on, we can do this!”

              “Pete,” Gabe said.

              “I can go in alone,” Pete said. Gabe sighed, and got out of the car with him.

              The store looked abandoned, but once inside, the woman at the counter stood up straighter.

              “Stragglers,” she said with a grin. “Do you you already have tickets, or would you like to hear about our available options?”

              “We’ve already got backstage passes,” Pete said, his eyes flashing gold as he waved a hand across her face. Her eyes went vacant for a moment, then she nodded.

              “After me,” she said, crooking her finger and beckoning them back behind the counter.

              The three of them walked through a beaded curtain to a dark staircase. She pulled out a sleek red flashlight and led the way down the stairs for a few flights, then pushed open the door to reveal an enormous stadium, filled to the brim with people cheering, fists pumping as they stared down onto the floor of the arena where two girls were tearing each other apart.

              “You know, I feel like this is a very bad place to not be human,” Gabe said in a low voice, and Pete shushed him. The woman led them down to the very first row, just a little higher than the arena floor and turned back to them with a bland smile on her face.

              “Loser or winner side?” she asked.

              Pete glanced at Gabe once then said “Loser.” She nodded and turned right, leading them to a small seating section filled with injured and unconscious magical creatures.

              “Enjoy the show,” she said, then flitted back up the stairs. Pete glanced around once she was gone and caught sight of Joe almost at once, running to his side.

              “Ready for round two?” Pete asked, and Joe jumped out of his seat.

              “Jesus Christ, give me a heart attack why don’t you?” Joe yelped. Then, glancing around in horror, asked “What the hell are you doing here?”

              “We’re breaking you out and hopefully dismantling the entire establishment,” Pete said.

              “And he calls himself a pessimist,” Gabe said, shaking his head.

              “Great plan,” Joe said sarcastically, “And how do you intend on getting everyone over there out?” he asked, gesturing to the far side of the arena.

              “Is that where the others are?” Pete asked. “They won?”

              “Yeah, Patrick’s won one round, Andy’s won two,” Joe said, and he sounded strangely upset.

              “That’s good?” Gabe said uncertainly.

              “Yeah, I guess,” Joe said. “Anyway, your plan was what?”

              “The element of surprise?” Pete said. “I mean, my plan was charmspeak, but we have to get Patrick and Andy…”

              “And Alex,” Joe said. “He’s the lead singer for-”

              “All Time Low, we know, they’re on their way,” Gabe said. “He’s winning too?”

              “For the moment,” Joe said bleakly.

              “Awesome,” Pete said, then looked nervously over to the other side. “Well, maybe we can just walk over there?”

              Before Joe could reply, probably scathingly, given the expression on his face, the crowd erupted into loud cheers, and the announcer’s voice boomed out over them.

              “Congratulations Leda!” he crowed as one of the girls walked back into the audience and another was carried over to their side. “Next up, we’ve got Patrick Stump and Abby Williams!”

              “Fuck!” Joe yelled, jumping to his feet.

              “There goes that plan,” Gabe said.

              “She’s a vampire!” Joe yelled, and Pete bit down on his lip.

              “Well?” Gabe asked as the two of them walked out into the center of the arena.

              “They’re not killing each other,” Pete reasoned. “And he’ll get brought over here afterwards, so maybe we should just wait?”

              “She’s killing people,” Joe said harshly. “I saw her earlier, so try again.”

              Before Pete could come up with anything to say, a bell clanged and the girl pounced at Patrick. He held up an arm, but her fangs tore into it, and he was gushing blood in seconds.

              Gabe was swearing in a long string, and Pete walked closer to the glass. He stared out, unable to look away, and as the vampire reared to strike again, Patrick caught sight of him, and ridiculously, a relieved grin spread across his face.

              “We’ve still got the element of surprise,” Pete muttered, just loud enough for Gabe and Joe to turn to him as he grabbed one of the stadium seats and threw it into the glass plate with all the force he could, shattering it on impact.

              The vampire girl looked up, stunned, as Pete ran over the ground, slippery with blood and what looked like tiny pellets of silver and various pieces of viscera. He paused only to yell “Are you getting out or what?” at the group of people behind him as he charged into the center of the arena.

              The losers ran out into the arena, those that could still run, and someone that looked like he was made entirely of stone began to attack the glass that faced the spectators to break it as well.

              “We kindly request that the contestants return to their assigned places,” a cool female voice had replaced the brash male announcer. Someone on the winning side had broken through the door as well, and more people were pouring out.

              “Pete!” Patrick yelled, and Pete turned to face him, his lungs finally filling properly as he looked at him, overwhelmed with relief.

              “Are you okay?” Patrick screamed over the roar of everything happening.

              “Me, why wouldn’t I be?” Pete yelled back.

              “The guards, they told me you were-” Patrick began, and a wailing noise came over the loudspeakers. It began raining onto the arena, burning hot and heavy like hail, and Pete gasped, his hands flying to his face.

              The horrible, hot rain did not let up, but Pete looked up with his hands just shielding his eyes to see dozens of people dressed all in black train their guns on all the contestants in the center of the arena.

              “The contestants will return to their assigned places,” the cool female voice repeated, just loud enough to be heard over the screaming.

              A girl, barely old enough to be in high school, it looked like, stepped forward, and was instantly shot. As she crumpled, something inside of Pete snapped. A full day of being keyed up and on the edge combined with excruciating pain and then, on top of it all, the sight of that pushed him way over the edge.

              Hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth, lightning struck and snapped all the way across the ceiling, frying the circuits that provided the announcements, sirens, and the silver rain, and blasted a hole straight through it, letting dusky light pour in. The lightning stemmed directly upwards from its source in Pete’s chest.

***

              Pete jerked backwards after the lightning had struck and the power blew out, falling into Patrick who did his best to hold him up, despite already being injured and a little on the weak and sickly side.

              “Holy fuck shit,” Patrick swore, and turned down to look at Pete, who was clutching his chest and staring down at it in disbelief.

              “CONTAIN THEM!” a woman screamed above the roar, and Patrick looked up to see all of the hunters in a tight circle around the contestants, guns trained and ready to fire.

              “Hey, buddy, not to stress you out or anything, but is there any chance you could do that lightning thingy again?” Patrick asked.

              “Um?!” Pete said. “I don’t? I have no idea how I?”

              Derrick, the creature Patrick had fought earlier, let out a wounded roar and swung his fist through a large group of hunters, sweeping them away with ease. Whatever their bullets were made of, it wasn’t silver, because they did very little damage to the rock monster.

              “Don’t worry about it!” Patrick yelled, and tried desperately to find Andy and Joe. Andy caught his eyes and ran over, ducking some of the bullets that were flying at the group of them.

              “Joe?!” Patrick yelled, and he was on top of them in a second.

              “Do not scream right now!” Joe commanded, his eyes flashing. He had Gabe Saporta next to him, which Patrick had not expected, and Patrick spun around once more, scanning the remaining crowd for Alex.

              Luckily, he found him pretty quickly, and grabbed him with his free hand, and took off running for the empty space in the group of hunters.

              It was like the worst, most horrifying real version of the games he was forced to play in gym class. It was exactly, he realized with a bit of hysteria bubbling in his chest, like sharks and minnows, where certain kids were picked to be the sharks, and they all had to run across the gym in hopes that there would be enough other kids to get tagged that they would escape. Patrick was typically one of the first tagged out in gym class, but somehow the addition of guns made it easier for him to run as fast as the others.

              And then, suddenly, they were past it. They were running up through the stands and Gabe was pointing towards what was presumably an exit.

              Patrick and everyone he was with burst out of the door that led outside first, spilling out into a desolate parking lot in what looked like the middle of nowhere. Patrick felt his heart sink, because there was no way he could keep outrunning trained hunters for any extended period of time, but he realized that someone familiar looking was hanging out of the window of a large white van.

              “Alex?” a kid with long, black and blond streaked hair asked.

              “Hey!” Alex yelled back, and they jumped into the van.

              “Wait! We can’t go!” Andy screamed. “Carm- they said Carmilla was in there!”

              “They said Pete was in there too!” Patrick yelled.

              Andy looked from Patrick to Pete, and Pete held up his hands, still looking dazed.

              “I just got there!” Pete said. Andy nodded and jumped into the back of the van, collapsing on the floor on his back.

              “Step on it,” Alex said, and the van roared as it swerved away from the tiny little strip mall.

              Two hours later, after a fantastic rosemary dinner, the large group of boys were all still congregated on the floor of Pete’s living room.

              “So,” Alex sighed. His hair was sticking up horribly after they put a white bandage across a gash on his forehead. “What do you think happened after we left?”

              “They probably went apeshit on each other. The hunters and the creatures and the rich assholes,” Joe shrugged. “Strangely I don’t feel all that sympathetic.”

              “Lots of the non-humans didn’t deserve it,” Andy said.

              “I’m sure they managed to get away,” Patrick said. “I mean, they didn’t look too terribly organized after a freak lightning storm fried everything,” he added with a grin. Pete just shrugged, still looking dumbstruck.

              “I have no idea what happened,” he said. “I guess- I mean, I’m not supposed to get any weird extra fae powers until I’m like, a hundred, but they say enough stress can trigger something, so maybe I’m, you know, lightning.”

              “The calamitous Pete Wentz,” Joe said with a smirk. “Fitting.”

              “Funny,” Pete said. “Hilarious. What happened to all that indomitable stuff when you lost your first round?”

              “Parents,” Joe said wisely, “Are complete fucking nutcases.”

              “I am sorry,” Andy said again.

              “Well, anyway,” Pete shook his head. “I’m gonna have to stay with someone else for a while, as no one can fix my house in less than a month. Any takers?”

              “You can stay in Chicago with me,” Patrick said immediately. Pete smiled a little, and Patrick grinned back at him. “Come on, you’ve gotta miss real pizza out here.”

              “Deep dish,” Rian wrinkled his nose up. “Gross.”

              “Nobody from the East Coast has permission to talk to me about pizza ever,” Patrick said bluntly. Then added, “Huge fan of your work, though.”

              “Thanks,” Rian laughed.

              It was easy, Patrick realized, being around people, having fun again. It wasn’t the best day had ever had, not by a long shot, but the adrenaline felt almost nice, and after spending nearly two years under the threat of extinction, a little adventure felt nice. He didn’t like whatever was going on with the mirror in Pete’s bedroom, but Ryan would be out soon to look at it, and in the meantime, he and Pete were going a full two time zones away from the thing, and Patrick was going to cover up all the mirrors in his place, just in case. And in that moment, leaning against Pete’s arm, he felt safe and whole.

             

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, you have my deepest apologies that A: it's almost december, B: it's unbetaed, C: it's shorter than usual, and D: it got hella sappy at the end, but I thought this chapter would be a fun little chapter to fill up my busy month. I hope you enjoyed! As always, you can check out bonus content, fanart, and regular updates on thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com, and thanks so much for reading <3  
> Chapter title by AC/DC


	5. Ship to Wreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While trying to relax an unwind on the Great Barrier Reef, the band runs into a familiar set of enemies, and Patrick discovers a new talent that may just be able to save them.

            Pete wasn’t used to losing arguments before Patrick came into his life.

            It wasn’t as though he used charmspeak on every person he came across, but he couldn’t help being at least a little charismatic. It was in his nature, so to speak, and people couldn’t help nodding along to what he was talking about, seeing things from his point of view a little faster than others. It was a useful skill, and Pete did his best not to abuse it. With Patrick, he never had to worry.

            “Absolutely not,” Patrick said, not even looking up from the screen of his MacBook. Pete exhaled in a huff.

            “Why not?” he asked.

            “It’s stupid, it’s a bad idea, we don’t have the time, I don’t like open water, we’re not scuba certified, it’s dangerous, and there will probably be more killer mermaids because I am a walking-talking-magical-Murphy’s Law-magnet,” Patrick said. “Need I go on?”

            “Look,” Pete said dryly, “I’ve never heard of mermaids being a problem outside of that one eensy isolated time, we’re not gonna be in Australia that long, and the Great Barrier Reef is dying! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

            “I don’t wanna go scuba diving!”

            “It’ll be just like Finding Nemo!”

            “Pete, what the fuck?” Patrick yelled, slamming the laptop shut. “Why don’t you just go on your own?”

            “Because,” Pete sighed for a long time, “I might have already told an Australian reporter that we were all going as a band.”

            “Oh, for the love of all that is holy,” Patrick rubbed his temples. “You can’t lie!”

            “And I intended on us all going! It won’t be any fun without you, and Joe and Andy already agreed!”

            Patrick glared at him.

            “Don’t we have to take a course in this?”

            “We’re kind of getting a crash course out on the water,” Pete said.

            “And you’re sure there are no mermaids?”

            “So sure.”

            “Sharks?”

            “Sharks attacks are extremely rare and reef sharks aren’t that hostile.”

            “And there’s absolutely no talking you out of this?”

            “None at all.”

            “I hate you.”

            He didn’t mean it, and Pete was glowing with happiness. He swooped down and kissed Patrick on the top of his hat, Patrick grumbling as he did.

            It wasn’t that Pete had a deep-seated love of the ocean or reefs in particular, he just thought that while they were in Australia they might as well see the Great Barrier Reef up close come on guys when will we get to do this again?

            The one free day that they had, Pete got the band a taxi down to an impressive looking building with a lot of fancy cars in front of it. It was sitting right on the coast, and there were dozens of identical large boats tethered to docks just out on the water.

            “It’s kind of late for a day trip,” Patrick noted, as the sun was already getting high in the sky, and Pete turned to him with a sheepish grin.

            “It’s actually a three-day trip,” he said. Patrick groaned.

            “Come on, dude, it’ll be fun,” Joe said. “No interviews, no photoshoots, and we get to see a giant coral reef!”

            “I don’t like swimming,” Patrick said. “The water looks like it’s freezing…”

            “You’ll be wearing a wetsuit,” Andy said.

            “And the last time I went swimming, there were killer mermaids,” Patrick added.

            “You haven’t been swimming in four years?” Joe asked.

            “I don’t like swimming!” Patrick said.

            “There are not going to be any mermaids,” Joe said. “Seriously.”

            “Three days?” Patrick asked weakly.

            “It was the shortest cruise I could find,” Pete said. “These all go like, 70 kilometers out.”

            “Come again? In American?” Patrick said.

            “It’s a hell of a long ways away from the shore,” Andy said bracingly. “But hey, three days, no press.”

            Patrick still sighed, but went inside, grumbling under his breath. Pete began signing all of them in at the registration desk, leaving Patrick to go sulk over by the window. Pete, meanwhile, blew through the waivers, occasionally flashing the man at the front desk a winning smile. He was halfway through the papers when he got to a problem.

            “Ah, ahem, scuba certification?” Pete asked.

            “Yes,” the man said, looking at Pete condescendingly, “Scuba certification. You all have it, yes?”

            “Can’t we ah, get certified here?” Pete asked.

            “Afraid not,” the man said. Pete grimaced.

            “What if I already paid and we aren’t certified?” Pete asked. The man raised his eyebrows.

            “Well then, mate, you can still snorkel, you just may not get as good of a look,” he said. Pete rolled his eyes.

            “What if I really wanna get up close and personal?” Pete asked. He tried to wink as he slid a few Australian bills across the desk.

            “Then I suggest you get scuba certified first next time,” the man said, and waved Pete on.

Being out on the water felt amazing. It had been freezing cold in the states, but in Australia it had been too hot to do anything, but up on the deck, Pete was getting cold salt spray in his face that provided an excellent contrast to the sun. Patrick had gone down to their cabin to set up, but the ocean was too gorgeous to ignore. Pete had never spent an extended amount of time on the water, so he had no way of knowing if he would get seasick or be able to sleep, but he was excited to find out.

            “This your first scuba trip?” a girl with a thick Australian accent asked.

            “Yes indeed,” Pete agreed, turning around. The girl’s eyes widened as she saw him, and he watched as she tried to control her expression. She looked like she worked with the company, and was trying to remain professional. He gave her a supportive smile.

            “Well, I hope you have a great time with us,” she squeaked, slinking away before Pete could say anything else. He fought back the urge to laugh, and decided to try and track down the others.

Pete eventually found his way down to the cabin he and Patrick were sharing to find Patrick glowering at himself in the mirror, distaste etched on every line in his face.

            “What’s up?” Pete asked, and Patrick jumped, his hands immediately flying up to cover himself, though, once Pete looked, he was fully dressed from toe to neck in a slippery black wetsuit. Also, bristling.

            “This is a nightmare,” Patrick said.

            “What? What’s wrong?” Pete asked. Patrick looked good, really good, in ways Pete tried actively not to think about, but how could he not when he could see every single curve and angle of his body, the wetsuit was skin tight and- oh. That was the problem, wasn’t it?

            “I am not-!” Patrick began, his voice too loud, his expression haughty, but Pete flinched back, already looking guilty, and Patrick deflated, sad filling in the place of angry. “I can’t do this,” he moaned, and fell back onto the bed. The black stomach of the wetsuit rippled.

            It wasn’t as though Pete could pretend he didn’t know what Patrick was talking about. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t know that Patrick didn’t exactly have the body type that ended up on magazines. Still, it didn’t seem to matter much to Pete, nor did it stop him from being overwhelmed by seeing Patrick in something that wasn’t baggy and bulky, but defining instead. Just the thought that millimeters under the wetsuit was an endless stretch of soft pale skin was enough to make Pete think things that he definitely couldn’t say out loud to cheer Patrick up. The thoughts were also pretty loud and distracting, and not putting Pete at the top of his game.

            So instead of telling Patrick that he was gorgeous, he did the next best thing.

            “We’re travelling into the middle of the ocean, pal,” Pete said with a small smile, “Nobody’s going to see-”

            “I will,” Patrick said, then took a deep breath, his chest expanding dramatically as he did. “Forget about it. S’not like I’ll be wearing it for long,” he said, standing up. He yanked the zipper down the back and started to tug the wetsuit off. Pete immediately averted his eyes. He made an effort not to look at Patrick, but the longer it took for Patrick to get undressed, the more difficult it became.

            Patrick let out a cry and Pete looked back at him, then tried and failed not to laugh. Patrick had managed to get the wetsuit mostly off of his torso, but one of his arms was still stuck, and he’d landed on the floor, trying to pull it off.

            “You need a hand there?” Pete said, biting back laughter.

            “No,” Patrick spat, and finally managed to free himself of the wetsuit completely and start getting dressed again. Nothing Pete hadn’t seen before given the years of living in too close of quarters, but they hadn’t been on tour in a while, not since Pete had really started noticing him, and it felt… different. Good different, definitely. Patrick was something to look at.

            “The weather’s nasty today,” the scuba instructor said once the boat came to a halt. “High winds, tall waves- it’s not too bad, but anyone snorkeling should probably stay on board. Too dangerous without all the equipment.”

            “You have _got_ to be kidding me!” Pete yelled aloud. The instructor gave him an apologetic look.

            “Sorry, mate,” he said, brushing sunny blonde hair out of his face. “I can’t have you getting injured.”

            “Thanks,” Pete seethed. Patrick, unsurprisingly, didn’t look particularly disappointed, though he did look supremely uncomfortable in the black and purple wetsuit clinging to him. Pete seethed in frustration. He was committed to this happening now, whether the others liked it or not, and once everyone scuba diving had left the boat, he found one of the other workers and gave her the most dazzling smile he could manage, complete with a little gold glint in his eyes. He recognized her as the girl who was starstruck yesterday, which was even better. She was already drooling.

            “Listen, my friends and I never get days off, and the weather really looks fine. We could go on a quick dive, right? We’re not quite certified, but you could keep it safe and discreet, right?” Pete said. The girl swayed slightly, dazzled.

            “Um, sure,” she said. “We’d have to take the boat a little ways away, but diving is super intuitive.”

            “Fantastic,” Pete clapped her on the back and said, “There’s four of us, by the way.”

            “I’ll- I’ll set up a dinghy so we can go out of the way,” she said, still looking confused, but a small smile played on her lips. “There’s a really pretty spot not far from here.”

            Pete grinned back, a little flirtatious, he was so excited to be up and doing something. Patrick rolled his eyes when Pete told them, but he didn’t look like he actively opposed it.

            “Guess who made an exception for us?” Pete asked, and Joe rolled his eyes, but smiled, his aura lighting up with excitement.

            “Is it safe?” Andy asked, and Pete waved his hand dismissively.

            “Of course it’s safe!” he insisted. “Come on, this boat’s full of idiotic tourists. Worst case scenario we have a bit of a swim and get a slap on the wrist for disobeying.”

            “That is so far from the worst thing that could happen,” Patrick grumbled, but he wasn’t actively fighting. Pete was glad, because he was pumped, and he hoped that Patrick would enjoy himself more once they were actually in the water.

            The girl deftly set a bright orange dinghy up on her own, and after a slightly complicated lowering process, they were on the water and speeding away from the larger boat.

            The big boat had just faded out of Pete’s sight when the instructor, whose name Pete had discovered to be Abby, let the boat drift to a stop and turned to face the band, her expression still glowing.

            “So, um, this is my favorite spot in the whole reef. Now, lemme start strapping you in, and I’ll give you guys a crash course.”

            Personally, Pete couldn’t tell this section of clear blue ocean apart from any other, but he took her word for it that they were in the right place and began to put on the equipment. The face mask looked exactly the same as what Pete remembered from what sat in a bucket of pool toys at a public swimming pool, but the heavy air tanks strapped on just like wearing a backpack, and dangling from the right side of them were black mouth pieces that Pete held clamped between his teeth for a moment and then let drop.

            “Yeah, the air tanks are pretty heavy up here, but you won’t feel them in the water,” Abby said after Pete grunted as he heaved the backpack on. “So with this piece in your mouth,” she tapped the black plastic that hung down, “Remember that you can only breath through your mouth. It’ll feel a little weird, but trust me, it’s fine. You’ve only got about half an hour of air in your tanks, and it’s hard to keep track of time down there, so make sure you can always see me and come up out of the water as soon as I signal. If you can’t see me, if anything seems off, get to the surface immediately, okay?”

            “Got it,” Pete said, flashing her another grin. She blushed slightly, but was back to business at once.

            “So, breath through your mouth, stay close, and stay aware of your surroundings,” she reiterated, and then grinned. “And with that, go ahead and jump in!”

            It was clear to Pete that she wasn’t used to teaching, but he leaned over backwards until he splashed into the ocean, pushing himself down and away from the sunlight streaming in.

            Once he was underwater, Pete knew that all of this was worth it. Better than a thousand pictures, the reef was beautiful, swarming with color and life. Not the strongest swimmer, he narrowly missed slapping quite of a few strange and brittle looking plants as he tried to stay in somewhat the same place.

            It felt like he had only just gone under the surface when something grabbed his arm. Panicked, Pete looked up to see Andy, recognizable only by his hair, dragging him up to the surface.

            Pete let the mouthpiece drop the second he came out of the water and pulled off his face mask as well, shocked to see that already the previously sunny sky looked a little grayer, and there was a mass of clouds encroaching from the distance.

            “Get back in the boat!” Abby called. She didn’t look worried, but her face was very serious, and Pete wasted no time in swimming over.

            Joe and Patrick were already sitting in the boat and nervously eyeing the clouds. It took a minute for Pete to climb back into the tiny craft, but the second both he and Andy were in, Abby ripped the equipment off of them and tore away from her favorite spot, her face lined as she sped away.

            “Is everything okay?” Pete asked after a moment, though he could guess the answer from the stressed silence.

            “There’s a storm coming in,” Abby said. “Nothing serious, but this craft isn’t really designed for big waves.”

            Pete’s stomach plummeted as she spoke. She was lying. He glanced back at the cloud, dark gray over one whole side of the horizon.

            “We’ll beat it back, right?” he asked, casually as he could.

            “No doubt,” Abby agreed. Lying again. Pete’s blunt nails dug into his palms, and Joe narrowed his eyes at him. Pete nodded, and tried to face away from the storm.

            Already as they were driving along, the waves were increasing in height. Far from the pleasant spray of the ocean Pete had started to get used to, cold water was slopping in and smacking Pete almost painfully, making his eyes burn and keeping him just a little too cold and wet to be comfortable.

            It was harder to see the larger boat on their way back, but soon Pete could see it, a much more ominous picture now that the sky was rapidly darkening all around it. He was just about to sigh his relief when a much larger wave rammed into the side of the dinghy, nearly spilling all five of them out and filling the bottom of it with water.

            “Fuck!” Joe hissed, his hands flying to his eyes to rub at the salt water in it. Abby definitely looked worried now, and she was biting her lip as she kept her eyes on the larger boat. Pete glanced over his shoulder to where the storm was the worst and clenched his muscles as he saw what was about to happen a second before it did.

            The crest of the wave shouldn’t have existed in real life, looked more like something out of an anxiety dream, and yet Pete felt it all the same as it crashed down on him and dragged him out of the suddenly tiny boat. The moment he felt the boat disappear from beneath him he reflexively opened his mouth to scream, only to have his throat flooded with saltwater. Eyes still shut, Pete flailed under the tossing water, his hands scrambling to find something to grab onto- a hand, the boat, a piece of coral, anything. He stuck underwater, the tightness in his chest was getting too painful to handle when his head breached the surface of the water again.

            Pete immediately gasped in as much air as he could, his eyes burning and streaming tears as he tried to find the boat again. His chest was still waterlogged and in pain, but he caught sight of the neon orange boat floating upside down on the water a few yards away.

            Buffeted by the waves, Pete began swimming for it, fighting against the water that was much stronger than him as he struggled to get words out.

            “Help!” he cried, his voice hoarse and cracked. “Is anyone there?!”

            As though in response to him, the orange dinghy flipped over and Joe’s head rose from beneath where it had been floating a second ago. Pete doubled his efforts to get over to them, his need only increased when he saw Andy swimming towards it as well.

            “Where’s-” Pete gasped for breath, grabbing the edge of the boat with one clammy hand, “Fuck- where’s Patrick and-” he coughed, spitting up water, “And Abby?”

            “Right here,” Patrick called, dragging himself over to the boat as well. He sounded nearly as wrecked as Pete did, and just as bedraggled. “But I don’t see Abby.”

            The wind was roaring and the sky was almost completely gray now. Pete held fast to the orange boat, but it was still getting buffeted by the waves, and his eyes were streaming in response to the wind and the salt.

            “We have to get to the bigger boat!” Joe roared over the wind. “We can’t stay out here in a storm!”

            “How do you suggest we get there?” Patrick yelled back.

            “You’re supposed to swim parallel to the shore, right?” Pete asked, loud as he could in spite of the pain in talking, the words grating against his throat.

            “Do you see a shore?” Joe screamed. Pete didn’t respond. He barely even saw the boat, a dark gray blur in the distance. It seemed further away than it had been just a few minutes ago.

            “We can try swimming over to it together,” Andy reasoned, though he didn’t sound even remotely hopeful. It was hard for Pete to see, and it was beginning to rain which only made it more difficult, but he caught sight of Joe giving Andy a hopeless look and then letting his eyes flick to Pete and Patrick. Pete’s stomach felt like it was full of lead, because he realized that only half of them had to be doomed.

            “You two should go on ahead and get help,” Pete said, and they all stared at him. “Come on, one of you has to be able to make it and then… then you can come back and get us, okay?”

            For a moment, there was no noise other than the rumbling of the waves and the wind. Pete squinted to get a better look at all of his friend’s conflicted faces, but he could hardly see anything through the haze of rain.

            “It might be worth a shot!” Andy called over the wind, turning to look at Joe. Joe might have nodded, or it might have been simply him bobbing in the waves. “Okay, shit, we’ll go try to catch up with the boat, you guys stay with the little boat, okay? I fucking mean it.”

            “We aren’t willingly going anywhere!” Patrick promised.

            “When you wanna do this?” Andy asked Joe.

            “Now, before it gets any worse,” Joe said, and met Pete’s eyes again, pleadingly, “Stay here!” he demanded, then they both took off in the water, swimming through the storm tossed waves as easily as if they were in a still swimming pool. It was so unfair.

            More unfair, though, was Patrick. Patrick, who hadn’t wanted to go on this trip in the first place, now coughing and literally barely keeping his head above water.

            “You know,” Patrick said conversationally, despite screaming over the roar of the ocean. “Once we started fighting monsters, I kinda thought I would die in a firefight with a vampire. This is a bit of a let down.”

            “Hey!” Pete said fiercely, sending a spray of water out as he pointed at Patrick, “You are not gonna die, not out here, not like this. You will die an old man, warm in his bed, surrounded by grandchildren-”

            “Stop!” Patrick yelled, sputtering water. The sky roared with thunder and wind. “Are you quoting Titanic at me?”

            “Was I?” Pete asked. He felt hysterical, and every icy wave that crashed over his head disoriented him further.

            “Don’t be stupid!” Patrick growled. “Nobody is going to die. Okay?”

            When Pete didn’t respond, Patrick snatched his hand up and squeezed it as hard as he could. It helped to ground Pete slightly, and he took a deep breath, ignoring the burn of the ocean’s spray in his throat.

            “It’s gonna be fine, alright?” Patrick said. “Now, um, could you stop kicking me please?”

            “I’m not kicking you,” Pete protested. He was barely able to tough Patrick’s hand from as far apart as they were, so it seemed a strange conclusion for him to jump to.

            Patrick was silent for five long seconds before he started shrieking and thrashing and kicking up nearly as much water as the wind was.

            “I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I FUCKING KNEW IT GODDAMMIT PETE I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT I KNEW IT I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE MAGIC I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M ABOUT TO GET KIDNAPPED BY-”

            Patrick’s rant was cut off abruptly as he vanished beneath the roiling water and did not reappear.

            Any semblance of calm Pete may have had disappeared in a flash, and he suddenly felt like he could not draw in breath.

            “PATRICK!” he screamed, letting the edge of the boat slip out from under his hands. His arms flailed and slapped against the rough surface of the water. “PATRICK WHERE ARE YOU?!”

            The moment Pete let go of the boat, it began to be carried away from him, or he was carried away from it, he couldn’t tell.

            Everything was blurring together, the sky and the ocean, the waves and the rain, and all Pete could see in any direction was water, deadly and endless.

            Just then he caught a glimpse of bright red hair in the distance, and, though he was exhausted, Pete began swimming towards Andy as hard as he could.

            “ANDY!” he screamed whenever he caught an extra breath. “JOE!”

            Pete wouldn’t have had a chance if they didn’t have extra powerful hearing, but they did, and Andy and Joe soon turned around and began swimming back towards Pete. Pete kept swimming desperately forward, afraid that if he stopped for even a moment the waves would sweep him underwater.

            “WHAT HAPPENED?” Andy yelled.

            “Some- something in the water- something pulled him under!” Pete sputtered, swallowing water as he tried to speak.

            Before either Andy or Joe could respond, Andy disappeared beneath the water. Pete was too stunned even to scream.

            “What the hell was that?” Joe yelled. “Pete, what the fuck was that?”

            Pete wanted to scream that he didn’t know, but he did. He knew exactly what it was.  

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Pete wailed. “I’m sorry I ever met you and dragged you into this, into any stupid band-”

            Joe snatched Pete’s arm and opened his mouth to say something, but he too fell beneath the surface, his hand still clamped onto Pete’s arm, dragging him down alongside him.

            Pete’s lungs burned as his head was engulfed in water. He ached to be back on the surface, but the moment Joe’s fingers went slack he felt something wrap around his ankle, smooth and powerful and cold and scaly and just a little too big to be a hand.

            Ignoring the burning, Pete forced his eyes open to stare at the faint light on the surface of the ocean fade away as he sunk deeper and deeper, until eventually black spots appeared on his vision, and the image of the last beams of sun faded into nothingness.

***

            Andy woke up clammy and shivering, very unusual for him, as he rarely, if ever, got cold. His skin felt tight and thick and the ground beneath him unnaturally hard.

            Had he drowned? Was he dead? Andy had never really believed in an afterlife, but he last remembered getting dragged underneath stormy water, going deeper and deeper until his head felt like it was being crushed and he lost consciousness.

            He felt pervasively heavy, but he forced his eyelids open. The scene he opened his eyes to, however, didn’t really make sense.

            Andy could see what looked like dark water above him, but not directly on top of him. He blinked a few times, but the image stayed the same. It seemed as though he was looking at a very dimly lit aquarium from below.

            He wanted to sit up to get a better look, but his head felt so heavy. He could hear a strange and muffled bubbling, gurgling noise, one that made no sense. He tried to turn towards it, but he was too disoriented. He tried sitting up, just slightly, but the gurgling noise got louder, and a sweet and cloying smell overwhelmed him, and his head thunked back against the hard floor before his eyes fell shut again.

            When Andy’s eyes reopened, he was sitting mostly upright, slumped as though he had passed out in the corner of the room. Around the rest of the room, the rest of his band had been propped up in a similar manner. The room was a semi-sphere, domed at the top and flat on the ground, and looked like it was made of an opaque, blue-black glass, but Andy couldn’t be sure.

            Hesitantly, he sat up, his skin feeling thick and damp. He looked down at his chest and noted, with some distaste, that he was still wearing the wetsuit from earlier. How much earlier, he wasn’t sure. The greenish light that filled the room emanated from a sphere that hung in the center of the room, glowing a pale and sickly yellow green. The entire atmosphere was cold and foreign, not so cold that he was worried for Pete and Patrick, but cold in a wet way.

            Andy stood shakily up, his joints snapping and muscles protesting as he did, like they hadn’t been used in a very long time. He shuffled across the room, dropping down next to Pete, the closest one to him, and shoved his shoulder a few times.

            “Pete,” Andy mumbled. His mouth tasted dry and cottony too, and his throat scratched when he tried speaking. His voice was just a whisper. He shoved Pete again. “Pete, dude, get up.”

            Pete’s head lolled on his shoulders, and his eyelashes slowly pulled apart until he was blinking at Andy.

            “Wha’s happen?” Pete slurred, looking vaguely boneless in the way he was slumped over.

            “I don’t know, but I think you should wake up,” Andy said, looking over his shoulder. The room was absolutely barren of anything but the four of them and the light giving orb, but he felt like he was being watched somehow.

            “Don’ wanna, wanna go home, ’stralia’s too wet,” Pete whined, his eyes still mostly shut.

            “Pete,” Andy growled. He smacked Pete in the arm, and Pete cringed, opening his eyes with a purpose.

            “Andy?” he slurred, and licked his cracked lips. “You’re not dead?”

            “None of us are yet,” Andy said. “Do you know where we are?”

            Pete raised one hand to cover his lips, suddenly shaking. His eyes were all the way open now, and he looked like he might start crying.

            “I think so,” he whispered, “I think- Jesus, Patrick was right.”

            “Usually am,” Patrick said from the other side of the room. Andy whirled to face him, and Patrick feebly pulled himself onto his knees and began to drag himself over towards the two of them. “Why this time?”

            “Mermaids!” Pete choked out. “Fucking mermaids, what else would have taken us?

            Andy blinked at Pete. He turned to Patrick, who could have been made of stone for all the reaction he was showing, and blinked again. It didn’t make any sense, but luckily, Joe said that for him before Andy could speak.

            “That makes no sense,” Joe said sleepily. “This is nothing like last time.”

            “What grabbed your ankle and dragged you down?” Patrick asked flatly.

            “This… this isn’t like last time,” Andy said, standing up with a wince. He ran his fingers around the cold, smooth glass, and frowned. “This is really high tech. This would be really high tech for humans. The last mermaids we met were trying to slice you up with stone knives to do research. Also, they were in freshwater.”

            “What else do you think could keep us underwater like this?” Pete demanded. Andy took a longer look at the glass and saw the faint movement behind it. He shivered as he understood the implications. They were in a reverse aquarium, with no sunlight visible at all. They had to be very, very deep, and it was too dark outside for Andy to see how or even if they were being held in place, or if they were just slowly sinking.

            “You think they took us to experiment on again?” Joe asked. Andy shivered for reasons that had nothing to do with the pervasive damp chill in the air.

            “Maybe. I mean, why else?” Pete moaned.

            “In that case… maybe they’ll let us go afterwards,” Andy mused. “I mean, we aren’t dead yet. And we can’t escape. So we can hope.”

            “True, very true,” Patrick said calmly, “However, I might add that I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO I SAID THERE COULD BE MERMAIDS I SAID IT COULD BE DANGEROUS BUT OH NO! YOU ALL SAID THAT MERMAIDS ARE AN ANOMALY, THERE’S NO WAY. AND I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!”

            Andy held his hands out slightly in front of him, blocking Patrick off. He looked manic, miserable and out of control and his face blotchy red with fury. Andy cringed as he looked at him.

            “Patrick, look we’re all really-”

            “DON’T YOU DARE. DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING APOLOGIZE,” Patrick yelled. His hands curled into soft fists at his side, but his red splotched face began to mellow out as he closed his eyes, taking in slow breaths. “Just- just don’t, okay?”

            “I’m so sorry,” Pete whispered, and Patrick shot a glare at him that silenced Pete at once.

            Andy bit his lip. The silence was overwhelming, and Andy turned from the tense display between Pete and Patrick to face the glass wall. He thought he could see dark shapes moving in the water around them, but he wasn’t sure whether this was his imagination or not. He leaned forward and tapped the glass, but it had no effect on the water outside, nor did it make a noise.

            “Think you could break it?” Joe asked.

            “Maybe,” Andy said. “If you had a death wish, that is. We couldn’t swim away from this.”

            “How deep do you think we are?” Joe asked. Andy glanced up at the domed ceiling and frowned. He could see best in the dim light such as they were in at the moment, but he couldn’t see anything no matter how hard he stared.

            “Too deep to get out without equipment,” Andy said. “I don’t know how we got in here, but they carried us in something or the pressure would have killed us.”

            There was a soft thud as Patrick kicked the glass, not even shaking the container.

            “So now what?” Pete asked desolately.

            “Now we wait,” Joe said, sitting cross legged on the ground.

            As it turned out, they did not have to wait a particularly long time for something to happen. The water around them seemed to get marginally lighter, though still a dim blue green. The dark shapes Andy was half sure he had imagined took a more defined form.

            Andy remembered the way mermaids had looked the one time he had seen them previously. Years ago, practically in another life, when Patrick and Jeanae had been kidnapped by mermaids, and Andy vividly remembered seeing the pale, gray creatures swimming lightning fast through Lake Michigan. Too big to be human or beautiful, they had mostly just been frightening.

            Now that he had a better chance to actually observe them without being in the middle of a rescue mission, his opinion became, if anything, stronger. Cutting through the water with blinding speed, Andy felt ill watching human hair streaming behind the shark-like creatures. The slower moving ones were worse, larger and with mouths slightly too big to be human, thick rows of homogenous fangs hanging over gray lips that could only be carnivorous. They looked more human than anything else in the ocean, but that still wasn’t very human.

            “I always pictured mermaids with dolphin tails,” Joe murmured. Both he and Andy were staring out of the glass, transfixed as they watched the mermaids swim by, some pausing next to one another to speak (presumably, as streams of bubbles flew out of their mouths whenever they stopped.) “But you know, given the size and the shape of the fins and all, I’d say they’re more sharks than anything else.” Joe leaned back slightly, frowning at the glass. “So who do you think was the first sailor that was so horny on his trip that he fucked a great white?”

            Miraculously, it got a chuckle out of everyone trapped in the tank. Andy smiled at Joe, and he gave him a half smile back.

            The situation seemed hopeless. Even if Andy could find a way out, the pressure would crush and kill them instantly, so what would be the point? Even thinking about it, Andy didn’t feel like it hadn’t sunk in yet that, however long he lived, he was spending the rest of his life trapped in there. He was too shocked.

            The tank lurched all at once, knocking Andy to the floor as it began drifting down and to the side. He tried to find something to grip, and when there was nothing, settled for splaying his hands as wide as he could on the glass and trying to hold himself still that way.

            Quite a few of the mermaids were watching them inside the tank with slightly concerned expressions, frowns that seemed more focused than upset. Their eyes, all focused on the band inside the tank, were dark and intelligent. Andy followed the gazes of the ones that weren’t looking at him and his friends over to where the tank was moving, and there he saw another light that they were approaching.

            No one else spoke as they got closer and closer. Eventually, Andy was able to see the glass tank they were approaching, which looked like an elongated version of what they were already in, with the same domed ceiling and flat floor, but stretched like a hallway and lit by multiple globes.

            With a screeching, grinding noise, the two tanks collided and aligned, grinding together with a shrieking noise until the floors were even. As soon as they were even, the glass separating the tank they were in from the hallway began shivering.

            “You suppose we’re meant to go in there?” Joe asked, and Andy nodded mutely.

            “How are they going to do anything with us this far from the surface?” Patrick asked. “It isn’t as though they can touch us without this all falling apart.”

            “How did they form a society and learn how to make glass without fire?” Andy asked. “They’re at least as intelligent as humans. Maybe more.”

            “Not entirely comforting,” Patrick muttered.

            With a low groan, the glass that separated the two tanks shimmered and dissolved, and a rush of warmer, drier air came through the hallway. It was very long, and at the end of it was another lit room, one where Andy could make out other colors.

            “I guess we should check it out,” Joe said, squaring his shoulders and taking the first step into the hallway.

            At the far end of the hallway was an enormous tank, the same semi-spherical build as the first, but filled, strangely enough, with trees. In the center of the room was a large rock outcropping, a waterfall spilling from the top of it, and trees and shrubs were growing around it. Rather than glass, the floor was covered in soft and moist black dirt. None of the plants matched, however, an oak tree and a rose bush growing with something tall and red and ropey looking that Andy thought he might have seen in pictures of a rain forest, and an unhealthy looking pineapple plant in the corner.

            Stranger than all of this, however, was the presence of half a dozen humans, either naked or dressed in rags, all of them staring at the newcomers in curiosity. It took Andy a few seconds of staring, but then it hit him.

            “This is a zoo,” Andy whispered. He felt his friends’ eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to look at them. “We’re in a fucking zoo right now.”

            “That’s not possible,” Joe said immediately.

            “I think, given the circumstances, you might want to adjust your perspectives on the possible and the impossible,” Patrick said at once.

            “Do you think any of them speak English?” Joe asked, eyeing the other humans warily.

            “We could ask them,” Andy said, wanting to do nothing less.

            Before they could approach the strange and feral looking humans, the sound of gurgling and bubbling that Andy had heard when he first woke up came again, louder this time, and from directly below him. He looked down at the section of glass he was standing on just in front of the soil and noticed strange slats in the floor, not letting water through, but held with a thinner material than the glass seemed to be made of. Under this were four mermaids, three of them nearly twelve feet long and dark eyed, but the fourth a little smaller than Patrick, clearly a child.

            The mermaid with the closest cropped hair gesticulated through the water as he spoke, bubbles flying rapidly as he gurgled and then pointed directly up to Andy.

            When the mermaid paused, Andy heard the exact same sort of gurgling coming from someone at his side. Andy turned in shock to see an annoyed looking Patrick moving his mouth, but emitting sounds that were completely inhuman.

            After a moment, Patrick stopped speaking, and shot a questioning look at Andy. All the mermaids and people were staring at Patrick in unmasked shock.

            Patrick crossed his arms and made another short noise at the mermaids, who all jerked back in shock. His eyebrows furrowed and he turned to Joe.

            “What? What’s their problem?”

            “Patrick,” Joe said slowly, “Why do you speak mermaid?”

***

            “I don’t speak mermaid! I wasn’t! Was I?” Patrick asked. Andy nodded fervently, and Patrick’s frown deepened.

            “You- you can speak!” the merman with short hair and a broad chest said in astonishment. It was a little distorted, coming through the water, but it sounded like regular English to Patrick. Of course, if he focused hard on it, he could hear a slight gurgling, and the water made it difficult to hear, but the speaking sounded normal to him.

            “All humans can speak,” Patrick said, and his friends flinched at the noise, but Patrick stayed focused on the merman. His black eyes widened as Patrick said this.

            “No humans have ever spoken to us before,” he said.

            “I think we’re speaking a different language,” Patrick said, and turned to his friends to get confirmation before remembering that they had absolutely no clue what he was saying. “But I mean, all humans have sophisticated language, to the best of my knowledge.”

            The position he was standing in hurt his neck, so Patrick knelt down closer to the ground. The talkative merman had his face nearly pressed up against the glass, while the other three hung back and treaded water with terrified looks on their faces. One of the adults seemed to be female, the other male, so maybe they were a family. A family just looking for a normal day at the zoo, and Patrick had ruined that.

            “So humans do communicate effectively?” he asked eagerly.

            “Depends on what you mean by effective, given how many languages there are and how few any one human speaks, but I guess,” Patrick shrugged. “Say, listen, we appreciate you trying to save us from drowning and all, but do you think you could, you know, take us home?”

            The merman looked confused, and the family even moreso.

            “But we saved you?” the merman said, confused. “Rescued you from a vicious and terrible fate. This is your home now.”

            “Can’t you put us back?” Patrick asked, his voice rising slightly. “This- this isn’t home, this is a zoo! I’ve got a family back home! Why would you rescue us if you weren’t going to let us go!”

            “Humans have a much higher lifespan in captivity-” the merman began.

            “You’re not going to take us back? For the rest of our lives?” Patrick demanded, his gurgling getting a little bit shrill.

            “Please! Please, calm down!” the merman demanded. “This is an incredible scientific discovery, and I have to tell people about this! You have so much to teach us about human culture!”

            “I’m not teaching you anything if you don’t let us go! You’re holding us prisoner like this!” Patrick said. The merman’s eyes narrowed, beginning to look angry.

            “Now see here!” he demanded. “You aren’t being held captive, you’re being kept safe!”

            “Safe to live and die in a cage?” Patrick demanded.

            “Do the humans want to go home?” the smallest mermaid asked quietly.

            “The humans very much want to go home!” Patrick exclaimed. “Wouldn’t you?”

            The little mermaid blinked back at Patrick, looking rather afraid. Her parents seemed to want to pull her away, but were too transfixed with Patrick to put much effort into moving.

            “Please,” Patrick pleaded, “I’ve got a family, a mom and a dad, and Andy, my friend there, he has a kid! Joe’s in love, and we all have friends. Please, I can tell you whatever you want if you’ll let me go?”

            “I think I need to alert someone else about this,” the merman said bleakly. “Let me- I’ll return. Come with me?” he said to the mermaid family, and the four of them swam away. Patrick sat back on his ankles, somehow feeling worse than when they first got in.

            “What in the fuck,” Pete said, “Was that about?”

            “Um, I think the family was just visiting the zoo and the bigger guy was a zookeeper or something, so he started talking about how we were rescued from drowning and then-”

            “No, no, back up,” Pete said, pressing his fingers to his eyelids. “You speak mermaid?”

            Patrick winced. “I guess. It just- I don’t know, it just sounds normal to me.”

            “But you’re speaking English now,” Joe said. “Can you speak mermaid again?”

            Patrick scrunched up his face, trying to focus on the image of the mermaids.

            “ _How’s this?_ ” he asked, and this time noticed the strange and guttural gurgling that the words sounded like.

            “Well that’s fucking terrifying,” Andy said. “And also makes no sense at all. You probably don’t even have a similar enough vocal structure to make noises like theirs.”

            “I got vivisected by mermaids a couple of years ago,” Patrick said, shrugging uncomfortably. “Maybe- I don’t know, maybe they did something to me.”

            “It’s possible,” Joe admitted. “I mean, we weren’t there for most of it. I guess they could have... Altered you.” Patrick shuddered. It sounded like a bad sci-fi novel, and it was still a pretty weak explanation.

            “But even if it made it so he could speak, how could he learn the language?” Pete asked.

            “Subliminal learning while I was under?” Patrick suggested.

            “The theory that you can learn while you’re asleep got proven false,” Andy said. “I think it could just be the weird surgery thing they did. Clearly they’re pretty scientifically forward. Maybe they’ve discovered something there that we haven’t.”

            “Maybe,” Patrick agreed, his right hand drifting up to the back of his head. The idea of something being altered in his mind was decidedly worse than the idea of his vocal chords being changed.

            “So what did they say?” Joe asked, his voice pointed, business as usual. Patrick cringed, wishing he didn’t have to repeat it.

            “He said that we were rescues,” Patrick repeated. “That they had saved us and- and that we were safer here. That this was home now, and anyway,” his voice dripped with sarcasm, “Humans live longer in captivity.”

            “We’re not even human!” Joe said, affronted.

            “Please don’t wolf out in front of them,” Patrick said wearily. “I don’t think that will make our situation any better.”

            “Well, you told them that they didn’t rescue us, right?” Andy asked. “That zoos everywhere are horrible and we need to get put back on land?”

            “I tried!” Patrick said. “They didn’t listen.”

            “Shit,” Pete ran his hand through his hair a few times, making it stick up. “Okay, shit. Now what?”

            “The dude went to get someone else, maybe a higher up,” Patrick said. “Hopefully I can convince them that we need to go home. I mean, they got us down here, so they can get us back, right?”

            “Right,” Joe agreed. “I mean, come on, you’re talking. They’ll have to let us go.”

            Patrick noticed the other humans eyeing them, some nervously and some speculatively, almost aggressively. He thought about waving, but decided against it. Some of them looked rather menacing.

            “This is the one! That one, there!” Patrick heard from beneath him, and he turned back to the slats in the floor to see the merman from earlier and two new mermaids, both of them looking rather dubious.

            “And you claim that he talked?” one of them said.

            “He did talk! He spoke to me!” the merman cried indignantly. Now that Patrick was focusing, he could easily hear the gurgling noise that sounded nothing like English, but it translated perfectly in his head. Patrick pondered why on earth that could happen for a moment, and while he did, the other woman laughed.

            “Yeah, he seems very talkative,” she gurgled, and Patrick scowled.

            “It’s just a dumb animal. You haven’t been getting enough sleep,” the first chided the man.

            “Yeah, and neither have I, so if you could keep it down,” Patrick said, his annoyance overcoming his curiosity to see how far the conversation would go. The two female mermaids gaped at him, and he smirked. “What, did you think the dumb humans just liked opening and closing their mouths at each other?”

            “That’s impossible,” one of them said. Patrick rolled his eyes.

            “Lots of things are impossible, but at this point in my life most impossible things have tried to kill me. You’ll get used to it, I promise.”

            “Hey, Rick, they’re floundering, get it? Floundering?” Pete teased, and Patrick waved a hand at him to quiet him. It was harder to switch back and forth between the languages now that he knew they were separate.

            “How can you speak?” one of the women asked.

            “Great question. Wish I knew. I have a few theories, but first,” Patrick leaned in closer, his eyes full of pleading, “You have got to let us out of here. Put us back up on land, where we belong. We have families, okay? We don’t wanna die here.”

            “Sweetie, even if we were going to put you back up on land, we wouldn’t do it now that we know you can talk. You’re invaluable,” she said breathlessly. Patrick growled.

            “So you’re not going to let us go? Not now not ever?” he asked.

            “Not so long as we have you,” the larger of the two mermaids said. “You can talk!”

            “Fine!” Patrick growled. “Then if you ever want to learn more about humanity, I guess you’re shit out of luck, because I’m not talking again unless I get a promise that my friends and I are out of here, and I see some damn proof too!”

            After this, the three mermaids began pleading with him, begging him to reconsider, but to their dismay, Patrick remained stubbornly silent.

            Eventually, he stood up and walked away from the window, much to the dismay of the mermaids who called after him, and walked over to the large waterfall.

            “Freshwater,” Joe said. “I tried it. I guess they have to keep us alive somehow,” he snorted. He looked desolate. All three of them did. Patrick’s chest ached to look at them, because he was the only one who had any chance of getting them out and yet he couldn’t do it. He had no idea how he could possibly accomplish it.

            A woman, a human woman, was standing on the other side of the waterfall. She raised her hand shyly at Patrick. She wasn’t wearing anything, but there was something too unnatural about her for it to be arousing.

            “Hi there,” Patrick said softly. “What’s your name?”

            She cocked her head slightly, and he took a step forward, causing her to panic and run away. Patrick shook his head, unnerved by the interaction.

            “I think I’m getting Planet of the Apes flashbacks,” he complained, and Pete laughed dryly.

            Though the new tank they were in felt gargantuan in comparison to the floating coat closet Patrick had woken up in, it was actually quite small, and the feeling of claustrophobia was only made worse as more and more mermaids began swimming by, their curious faces too close to the glass as they stared in at all the humans. Not for the first time, Patrick pinched the fabric on his wetsuit and hated it. Of course, if he had to get put on display, it would be stuck wearing nothing but a clingy wetsuit. His life was a never ending proof of Murphy’s Law, in that anything that could go wrong did go wrong.

            As much as the mermaids scared him, a few hours into the day Patrick was horribly bored, and still angry enough at the others for dragging him into this mess in the first place that he wanted to talk to someone else. Since it didn’t seem like any of the other humans in the enclosure spoke English, he wandered back over to the slatted glass and waited there, staring out at the dark water until a very small mermaid swam up to the glass, staring in. The small mermaid was dragging what looked like a bored looking mother behind him, but he didn’t notice or didn’t care about his mother’s apathy.

            “Do you think humans have favorite colors?” he asked.

            “I do,” Patrick said, and the little mermaid’s eyes widened in wonder.

            “Mom, he talks!” the boy said.

            “That’s nice, dear,” his mother said.

            “My favorite color is orange,” Patrick said, leaning in closer. “Like the sunset. What’s yours?”

            “Brown,” he said. “You’ve seen a sunset?”

            “Almost every night I catch a glimpse of one at least,” Patrick said. The mother had noticed him and was staring at him in horror, but Patrick was focused on the little boy. “Have you seen one?”

            “Uh-huh,” the little boy said. He pressed his hand, every bit as big as Patrick’s, up against the glass and looked at Patrick with big and shiny black eyes. Patrick pressed his hand to the glass as well, and the boy giggled. “We feed at sunset, up on the surface. It’s pretty.”

            “I think so too,” Patrick said.

            “Oh my god, he can talk,” the mother whispered, but Patrick and the little boy were engrossed in conversation.

            “What’s it like to live on land?” the boy asked. His hair looked almost like it was slithering the way it moved as he bobbed in the water, but somehow the eerie gray skin and scales were less intimidating on a child’s face.

            “Well, for one thing, it’s sunny all the time,” Patrick said. “I like that. I like sunny weather. I like rainy weather too, though.”

            “Rain?” the boy asked. Patrick frowned. He the word he was using sounded right, and definitely wasn’t said in any human language, but maybe the concept was new.

            “Yeah, it’s, uh, water from the sky,” he said. The boy looked confused still, so Patrick tried again. “You know how bubbles are air that goes up?” he tried, and the boy nodded. “Well, rain is the opposite. It’s water that falls down. Bubbles go up because air is lighter than water, and rain falls down because it’s heavier than air, see? So I like rainy weather.”

            “It sounds weird,” the boy giggled.

            “Wait till I tell you about tornadoes,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. The little mermaid seemed bored with weather talk, so he changed the subject.

            “Do all humans talk?” he asked.

            “Well,” Patrick paused, “All the humans I’ve met on land talk. And all my friends talk. But I haven’t been able to talk to some of the others here, and I’m not sure why. But most humans talk.”

            “Those humans don’t talk because they were bred in captivity,” a gruffer voice said. Patrick looked past the little boy and saw a rather large crowd of mermaids had gathered behind him. Patrick glared at the other mermaids and turned his attention back to the little one.

            “Do you have a name?” the boy asked happily.

            “I don’t think it would sound like much to you, but yes,” he said. “It’s Patrick,” he said, saying his name in English. The boy laughed a little, and hid behind his mother.

            “Come on baby, let’s leave,” she said, swimming away quickly. Once they were gone, Patrick could properly see the crowd they had left behind them, and he smiled humorlessly.

            “I see you’re answering questions again?” the larger mermaid from earlier said.

            “Not yours,” he said, and walked away from the window.

            The hours inside the tank wore on and on, and though dozens of mermaids were staring at Patrick, he pointedly ignored all of them except for the children that were bold enough to call out to him. The kids, he explained to his band, hadn’t done anything wrong. They mostly asked him benign questions, like what his name was or how he got down there, and very few kids were brave enough to call out to him.

            As time wore on, fewer and fewer mermaids floated by, and eventually Patrick noticed that the lights were slowly grower dimmer, and the room they were in getting marginally colder. The false day had ended and was being replaced by an artificial night time.

            “You think we’re going to get fed? Or are we supposed to start grazing?” Joe asked, eyeing the grass with distaste.

            “Humans are naturally omnivores,” Andy sighed. “I’m sure they’ll send something in.”

            The four of them had found a particularly large and somewhat spongy tree to lounge underneath. The ground was unpleasantly damp and jungle like, but minutely more comfortable than perching on the rock outcroppings, and slightly more private as well. The lights were still on, but quite dim, and now felt more like street lamps than small suns glowing around the inside of the tank.

            They were quiet, mostly. Though no one said it, this didn’t feel like a regular adventure. It felt strange and unearthly, and though they had only been trapped there for a day, maybe two, Patrick already missed the sight of the sky. Being surrounded by water for this long felt deeply wrong, like the buzz of a long school day trapped under fluorescent lights magnified by a thousand. Andy had estimated that they were nearly a thousand meters below the surface, where so little light reached that it was impossible for plants to live because there was no chance of photosynthesis.

            More than missing the sun, Patrick missed his family. He had been planning on calling home after the scuba trip, and now what? Andy was doing the worst, of course, and Patrick felt the worst for him, but he still felt incredibly sorry for himself.

            “Your aura looks like hell,” Pete said conversationally. “What’re you thinking about?”

Pete was one to talk. He looked like he had been pushed to the edge and directly over it. His hair was a mess since he was in captivity, his eyes were rimmed in red and had bags beneath them. But by now, his voice and his expression had gone flat, like a kid that had cried themself out of tears.

            “I’m just…” Patrick didn’t know what he was just. His throat caught, and he picked up a stick to fidget with, digging it into the black soil over and over again, carving a hole in the ground. “I’m not ready to spend the rest of my life here.”

            “Well, at least you have more people to talk to than we do,” Joe laughed, though he didn’t look like he found it all that funny. Patrick didn’t even try to laugh.

            “Come on,” Patrick pleaded suddenly. “This isn’t us. I know this looks crazy, but we have to find a way to get out, right?”

            “How?” Andy asked. “This isn’t some kind of monster we can beat and walk over the corpse of. We are so deep in the water that we’d need a submarine to save us.”

            “They’ve got the technology,” Patrick said. “They’ve got ways to get us down, so it stands to reason that they have ways to get us back up. All we have to do is find it.”

            “And how do you suggest we look for it?” Andy asked.

            “I think-” Patrick began, but he was cut off by a shrill screeching sound coming from the far side of the tank. All of their attention was diverted to another tank, a very small one, merging with their large enclosure near the bottom. The glass between the two structures shimmered away, and in slid ten bowls filled with something lumpy and grayish. They walked over towards it, seeing the other six feral humans do the same, and the glass fell back into place before the tiny tank floated away.

            Each of the other humans only took one bowl each, and Patrick had a brief sickening thought that they must have been trained harshly to do that, and wondered what on earth the consequences were for disobeying.

            Hungry enough to eat almost anything, Patrick picked up the bowl that was made of the same thick glass and inspected the contents. He would hazard a guess, based on the smell, that it was some type of ground up fish. A few chunks of something sickly green that looked like seaweed poked out of the gray mush, and he felt nauseous.

            “Yeah, I think it’ll take a few days before I’m that hungry,” Joe said, setting his bowl back down. Patrick and the others followed suit.

            “We have got to get out of here,” Patrick said.

            It took him a very long time, but he did manage to fall asleep the first night, finally giving in and curling up against Pete’s side against the slightly too cold air inside the tank. He woke up the next day with a painful cramp in his neck, still very hungry, and in a foul mood. Not long after he got up, he heard the mermaids attempting to call his name in English.

            “Are they… are they trying to say Patrick?” Joe asked.

            “Probably,” Patrick sighed. He walked over to the window like section of glass and started at the huge amount of mermaids that were all congregated in front of it.

            “What?” he asked in mermish.

            “Are you willing to talk to a few of the top primatologists in the ocean?” one mermaid asked.

            “You could so help our education system, help us to understand humanity!” another said.

            “If you had assholes, I would tell you to shove something painful up them,” Patrick said tonelessly. “Send me home.”

            “Be reasonable!” one of the mermaids complained. Patrick considered telling them to fuck off again, but an idea struck him then.

            “This is all to benefit children and education, yeah?” he asked, and the mermaids that must have been working for the zoo all nodded eagerly.

            “Fine, then,” Patrick said. “I’ll talk to them, sure, but in a large group. And if you want to bring in classes, I like talking to kids better.”

            “Why is that? Is it a human trait?”

            Patrick leaned in close to the glass before responding.

            “No, it’s because maybe they can grow up to be better creatures than you still,” he said. “Go ahead and bring them in, I’ll answer their damn questions.”

            Apparently, a lot of people had been waiting for Patrick’s green light. It only took minutes for them to file in a dozen very stern looking fully grown mermaids and the same amount of children, all of them floating just in front of the window and staring anxiously up at Patrick.

            “Hey there,” he said, and they all jumped like they hadn’t initially believed what they were told. Patrick smiled a little.

            “Impossible,” one of the adults said, and Patrick tried and failed not to roll his eyes.

            They all seemed too dumbfounded to ask any questions at first, and it was a young kid that spoke up before anyone else.

            “Why is some of your skin a different color than the rest of it?” she asked. Patrick laughed a little.

            “It’s not skin. It’s clothing. I wear it to keep me warm. This kind of clothing is specifically designed to keep me warm and insulated in water,” he explained. The girl raised her hand again, and with a laugh, Patrick pointed at her again.

            “But don’t you have fat to keep you warm? I heard mammals have fat to keep them warm,” she said.

            “I’ve got plenty of fat to keep me warm, but my skin gets cold if I don’t wear clothes, and especially in the water it’s important to have a wetsuit like this on, otherwise you can get used to the temperature and not even know if you’re in danger.”

            A lot of the scientists now tentatively had their hands raised as well, looking as though they rather resented having to raise their hands, but Patrick pointed at another one of the children.

            “Why are you dressed to go swimming? I heard you were drowning!” one boy protested.

            “We were swimming for fun, my friends and I,” Patrick said, and he gestured behind him at his band. “But a storm hit, and we lost track of the boat. It was all just a, um, misunderstanding.”

            He reluctantly pointed to one of the adults, who killed the mood quickly.

            “What is the average daily diet for a human being and how does it differ from other modern primates?” the man asked, and Patrick blinked at him.

            “Um, I mean, I guess most primates eat a lot of uh, fruit and stuff whereas humans eat more, um, grains? I don’t know, man, most human food is pretty processed. Pete eats almost exclusively pizza which is like, a grain and crushed fruit and cheese? Um, like, do you guys produce milk? Cheese is made from milk.”

            The crowd looked confused, but Patrick shrugged and moved on to the next question.

            The whole morning passed in this fashion, Patrick answering question after question, funny and simple from the kids and often too complicated from the adults. Multiple times he had to remind the audience that he was a fairly average human who failed world history in high school, and occasionally translated an answer that someone else in his band had. Eventually, though, the question he was waiting for came up.

            “But don’t you miss your family if they’re still on land?” a little kid asked him, and Patrick gave her a sad smile.

            “More than anything. All I want to do is to go back home, be back on land, and see my parents again.”

            “Why can’t you go back?” another asked. Patrick gave him a sad smile.

            “The pressure would kill me if I tried to escape. I don’t know how I was brought down here, but the people that brought us in won’t take us back. So I guess I’m a prisoner here.”

            The zoo workers did not take well to that, and a mermaid swam to the front of the crowd, blocking off their view of Patrick and saying “I think that’s enough for one day!” before shooing everyone out. Some of the mermaids shot dark and concerned looks at Patrick, and Patrick looked sadly back at them.

            “What are you up to?” Pete asked, once the water around the tank had cleared of all visitors.

            “Imagine that a dolphin at SeaWorld starts talking and telling all the little kids that it misses its family,” Patrick said, and winked. “I’m getting us home one way or another.”

***

            Joe dreamt of the desert.

            Before getting kidnapped by mermaids (and oh, wouldn’t that make a hell of a bar story later? Yeah, my uncle was a prisoner of war, I was a prisoner of mermaids, kept in an underwater mer-zoo, ogled at by shark-people, wanna hear?) Joe had held a sort of resentment for deserts. He didn’t like the constant heat, and though he didn’t always have the best experiences with forests, he hated deserts. Hated the dryness and the sand and the craggy earth devoid of vegetation. He longed for water, got thirsty even thinking about Nevada half the time.

            He would give anything to be there now. To be stranded in the middle of the Australian Outback and doomed to die there just to feel the sun on his face, because the absolute worst part of all of this was the _darkness_.

            Joe wasn’t afraid of the dark, not by any means. But the endless night, endless water, it was driving him insane.

            By the end of the second day, he caved and ate the food the mermaids shoved in for them. Patrick had explained in one of his many talks, in between sliding in comments about his family and dry land and homesickness, that this really wasn’t the kind of food that was seen as appetizing to most humans, but the mermaids said there was nothing they could do about it.

            The food, as it turned out, had not been terrible. The fishy taste was strong, but when combined with the seaweed it almost reminded Joe of old sushi, if sushi came pre-chewed. Pete and Patrick gave in about an hour after him, but Andy remained staunchly vegan. After Patrick explained it to some of the terse zookeepers, they provided Andy a bowl of plain seaweed the next day, but he was far from being in a good mood.

            Life, as strange as it was, began to settle into a rhythm. He was unable to pick up on anything Patrick or the mermaids were saying to each other. Still, Joe always stayed close to Patrick to help answer questions when Patrick had no answer, and also because Joe didn’t trust the mermaids, and didn’t like them to be split up. Still, bored with the idea of being stuck in an endless interview, Joe, Pete, and Andy dug holes in the ground and found some bits of twig to make a primitive mancala board, even teaching one of the more social bred-in-captivity humans how to play. They didn’t know his name, and Andy insisted it would be rude to name him, but Joe and Pete decided to call the man Bob. He didn’t speak, but he seemed to like hanging out with them.

            Food came once, at night, although they argued about if it really was night when the lights went down and what time it really was on the surface. After the first few days, they all ate something, albeit begrudgingly. The thing Joe craved the most after sunlight and Marie was real food. Any real food. It cycled what he craved, and he had been officially banned from talking about food after nearly bringing his whole band to tears with a description of white bread, but he really would have killed for a Chicago-style hot dog.

            And while Patrick chipped away at his plan to earn enough sympathy to get taken back to the surface, Joe felt completely and totally useless.

            Sure, it was random chance that Patrick could speak mermaid and no one else could, but Joe wished he could do something. He trusted Patrick completely in theory, but in reality he would have liked to have some sort of power over his own life.

            Joe and Andy had tried going back through the hall to the vessel they had entered in and were surprised that it hadn’t been taken away, but they couldn’t find anything strange there. In fact, they couldn’t find any of the mechanisms that controlled this strange underground sanctum at all. All that was there was glass.

            “But where does the glass come from?” Pete had asked. “You need fire for glass, and you can’t have fire underwater!”

            They asked Patrick to ask the mermaids, but apparently they either would not tell him or did not understand the question.

            They had Patrick answering questions for long hours, but there was still downtime, possibly to keep the other humans happy, as they got rather upset when the lights were off schedule, so there was still time to talk.

            “We’ve been missing for five days,” Andy said. It was needless for him to say so, but Joe didn’t want to start a fight with him, not when Andy was so miserable down there.

            “Yeah?” Joe asked when it became apparent that no one else would.

            “What do you think they’re saying back home?” Andy asked. “I mean, it’s not as though we’re off the grid, you know. Not sure if you noticed, but we’re sort of in Fall Out Boy, and we’re also a little on tour. People know we’re gone, and I doubt they’re happy.”

            “Here’s hoping they’re looking in the wrong place,” Pete said, and Joe stared at him.

            “What?”

            “Do you not want to get saved?”

            “Of course I do,” Pete said impatiently. He had taken to carving his initials into the spongy tree they slept under when he was bored, but now he put the stick down. “But can you imagine what would happen if the coast guard stumbled on this place? There’d be massive panic, probably an interspecies war, and we would get caught in the crossfire. Besides, they don’t exactly have technology compatible with humans, so how would they get us out anyway? No, we need to get out on our own.”

            “Working on it,” Patrick sighed wearily. “You see the girls in the back today? The angry looking ones that made the zookeepers look nervous? I think they’re activists, and the group today was bigger than yesterday. One of the kids started crying too when I talked about grass. We’re getting somewhere, and people keep asking me more questions about being kept here against my will. One way or another, something’s gonna happen.”

            “As long as ‘something’ isn’t you getting silenced JFK style,” Joe said darkly. “Maybe they’ll decide the controversy isn’t worth the resources it would take to get us home.”

            “Don’t be so optimistic,” Patrick teased.

            “I hate being fae,” Pete sighed. “I always wanted to be a sarcastic person. I bet Ryan Ross is a happier person than I am.”

            “I wouldn’t get too worried about it, buddy,” Joe said, then frowned. “Wait a second…”

            Joe looked at all of them, but bit his lip, trying not to get his hopes up. “Pete, you’re fae…”

            “Thought of that,” Patrick sighed. “I’ve been trying to teach him some mermaid, but he’s not picking up on it very well.”

            “You’re also a shitty teacher,” Pete said, and Patrick rolled his eyes.

            “Well, if we’re stuck here for a long time, that might work out eventually,” Patrick said. But for now, it’s not getting us anywhere.”

            “What is?” Joe wondered aloud, rolling over and away from them.

            He felt like he had just fallen asleep on the cold ground when someone was shaking him awake and he rolled over, looking up blearily at Pete, his eyes shining with what could have been excitement or fear.

            “What’s happening?” he groaned as Pete yanked him up into a sitting position.

            “There are some mermaids here and I think it’s important,” Pete said, a manic smile growing on his face. “The girls in the back from earlier?”

            Comprehension slowly dawned on Joe as he took in the words. “You think they want to get us out?”

            “Maybe, now come on!” Pete pleaded, and Joe followed him over to the window, where Patrick and Andy already were kneeling.

            Patrick was gurgling rapidly at the mermaids, and the noise still creeped Joe out. It sounded worse from Patrick, dry and raspy without water there to soften the noise.

            Behind the striated glass were three female mermaids and one male merman, the very first one they had run into, Joe recognized as he saw him. The short haired woman was talking to Patrick eagerly, bubbles flying out of her mouth as she gurgled to him, her hands moving in circles as she spoke.

            “What’s happening?” Joe pleaded in a harsh whisper, but he was promptly shushed by both Andy and Pete as Patrick replied in a slightly slower, more concerned guttural gurgling.

            “What are they talking about?” Joe asked Andy in a slightly lower whisper.

            “I don’t know, but the zoo is closed and only one of them works here,” Pete said.

            “Do you think we’re leaving?” Joe asked.

            “Oh, don’t jinx it, there’s no wood in here,” Pete said, and Andy rolled his eyes slightly, mostly keeping his gaze fixed on the mermaids.

            Patrick held up one finger at the three of them and frowned so as to tell them that they needed to wait a minute. He said something else, and the mermaids nodded, and then he turned to face the others.

            “They think they can get us out of here,” Patrick said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading!!!! Can't believe that another year has gone by and I'm still writing this story, but having the story and all of you reading it makes me feel like the luckiest author in the world :) A few thank yous, first to my incredible beta who does more work than I deserve and is also an incredible author that I haven't read enough of, ao3 name doc3 (thank you so much!!!) Next, to the reader that sent in the ask about Florence and the Machine songs reminding them of the story, as you can see, you had a bit of an influence in the chapter name :3 To my girlfriend, who (I hope you guys can keep a secret till midnight) is going to be my fiance after tonight <3 To the tumblr user who helped me with the holiday drabble, to everyone who makes edits and art and sends in asks, and to those of you who just read it, thank you all so so much!  
> This is technically part one of a two part chapter, so I will be back again in January of 2017 with the daring escape from the merzoo  
> I hope you all had a happy or tolerable holiday season, and let me know what you think in the comments! Thanks as always for reading <3  
> Song title by Florence and the Machine


	6. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two of the mermaid saga- Pete, Patrick, Andy, and Joe have been kidnapped by mermaids and are being kept in a mermaid zoo. Patrick discovers some pretty incredible powers, and thinks he finds a way to get them out. But what lengths will the band go to to escape a prison when freedom can be deadly?

              Patrick really wished that they hadn’t been captured in scuba suits.

              It wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, he supposed, but it was a daily inconvenience. Even once he got past the self-consciousness of wearing it 24/7, there was still a lot wrong with it. It was too tight, for one thing, hugging his skin too closely to be comfortable. Because it was so tight, it was a pain in the ass to take on and off. Whenever they made it back to land, he was never wearing a wetsuit again. In fact, he planned to never be in more water than a shower ever again if he could avoid it.

              “What do you think is going on up there?” Joe mused one night. It had been two days since the nighttime arrival of the mermaid activists, and Patrick was half convinced he’d have to go on vocal rest simply from talking so much. He still didn’t mind the kids, but there were so many of them, and he never got a break from talking, telling them everything he could think of about his life.

He tried to explain why he was vegetarian when he didn’t need to be, the feel of sun-warmed grass between his fingers, the brightness of colors, the cragginess of the desert, the scent of diesel. Some things were easier to explain than others, but nothing he said came out the way he wanted it to. Pete should have been the one with magical mermaid-speak. He could have told the kids what music sounded like unimpeded by water distortion, or what bananas tasted like, or what humans did for birthday rituals, but unfortunately, Patrick could only translate.

              “I think the mermaids’ll come and tell us when they have a plan,” Patrick said, his voice croaking with hoarseness. It was a shame that seaweed and tuna never translated into tea with honey, but he was making do.

              “Not up there, like, _up there_ ,” Joe said, pointing at the roof of their dome and then pointing at the roof again, his hand slightly higher reaching. “On land. I mean, I know we had a break from shows and all, but we had interviews scheduled. A photoshoot, I think. I mean, they must know we’re gone by now.”

              “It could’ve been covered up,” Andy said mildly. “After all, KTC said he was used to this sort of thing. Maybe he’s making excuses for us until he can get us back.”

              “Not if he thinks we’re dead he isn’t,” Joe said.

              “He shouldn’t think we’re dead. He knows us better than that,” Pete said, his voice almost admonishing. He paused for a moment, biting his lip. “And, anyway, Ryan can see us now.”

              “He might not see us coming back,” Joe said. A thick silence followed.

              “Well, I hope he hasn’t set up our funerals yet,” Patrick said, his voice thick with sarcasm, “That’ll make it all very confusing when we come back from the dead. Not to mention we’ll just be branded as copycats. Paul McCartney already pulled that one.”

              “Do you think the Beatles ever got kidnapped by mermaids?” Andy asked after a beat of silence.

              “I’m going to be perfectly honest, I think only the four of us could get into a situation this goddamn ridiculous not once, but twice,” Joe said.

              The four of them laid on their backs, waiting for sleep. They were all on what Pete lovingly called “rock-star hours” and they still had difficulty falling asleep when the lights first began to dim. Patrick stared up at the top of the dome and wished, as always, for stars. They weren’t quite deep enough for phosphorescent fish, but not nearly shallow enough for any starlight or moonlight. Once Andy swore he could see the sun, but that made absolutely no scientific sense. Of course, neither did an underwater mer-zoo, but Patrick had to cling to some of his beliefs so he didn’t fully succumb to the absolute insanity of all of this magic.

              “How do you suppose our parents are doing?” Joe asked.

              “Let’s not,” Patrick said immediately, the words scratching at the inside of his throat. Someone’s hand, probably Pete’s, reached out and squeezed his, and he squeezed back immediately, revelling in the warmth of it. Patrick knew that even if Ryan saw the best possible outcome, even if KTC had covered up their mysterious disappearance, his family was worried sick. They knew something was wrong. And for the first time since he had gotten into this band, he really wondered whether or not he would die without his mom knowing what he’d really done or who he really was.

              “What should we do first when we get out of here?” Andy asked. That was their go-to question when things looked too bleak, when someone needed to take their mind off of everything.

              “I’m gonna take a bath,” Pete said. Patrick rolled over just to gave him a disparaging look. Pete laughed when he saw Patrick’s face, a real, full-bodied, trademark Pete Wentz laugh, his eyes crinkling shut and his mouth opening all the way to show his teeth. Patrick’s chest warmed a little against the clammy cold of the room just looking at him. It didn’t stop him from feeling judgemental.

              “Really? I mean, really? Because I’m contemplating no longer drinking water or ordering soup after this experience. And you want more of water?” he asked in disbelief.

              “Dude, I just wanna get clean and smell like flowers,” Pete said. “I look exactly like something that belongs in a zoo. I want a bar of soap and some cologne and a razor. We won’t even get rescued if bystanders see us because no one will recognize us.”

              Patrick laughed a little, and scooted closer to Pete. The enclosure got a little too hot during the day and a little too cold at night, and wetsuits, as it turned out, were designed for water, not air. He tried to be surreptitious when he curled in closer to the others, but hell, it wasn’t as though they had blankets, and all four of them were cold.

              “Well I, for one, am absolutely dying of thirst,” Andy said. “I’m gonna sweet talk my way into the biggest blood bank in Australia and gorge myself. Mosquito style.”

              “Disgusting,” Joe said offhandedly.

              “After that,” Andy continued as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “I’m going to eat at least three boxes of vegan corn dogs and run a mile in the sun.”

              “I just want my MacBook,” Patrick said, his voice half a whimper at the thought of it. He thought for a moment longer, and amended it. “That, and a bottle of scotch.”

              “Well I want to see my girlfriend, but yeah, food and wifi will be nice too,” Joe scoffed. Patrick laughed a little again, glancing up at the endless expanse of ocean above him.

              “I suppose it could be worse,” he mused.

              “It could?” Joe asked.

              “We’re all here together,” Patrick said. He hoped it came off sounding ironic, even though he meant it. Being stuck here alone was a completely unbearable thought.

              “At least these guys are a little more civilized than freshwater mermaids,” Joe agreed.

              The gushing of the waterfall still filled the air and provided some static noise, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as the roaring air conditioning that filled hotel rooms, so aside from the chilly air, lack of food, and general discomfort, Patrick was able to sleep there pretty easily.

              Patrick also, however, had a pretty tight schedule what with all the classes that visited to ask the human questions. Usually he (and everyone else in the tank) was roused with horrible noises being broadcasted through the tank, but the next morning he woke up naturally on his own. He felt warmer than usual and he wriggled in closer to whatever was providing the warmth, not entirely surprised to discover that he and Pete were lying practically on top of each other. An occupational hazard, he decided, of not having super powers that made them never cold. Pete’s hair was getting frizzy-curly, but Patrick kind of liked it like that, soft and downy. Plus, he was the only one who’s hair wasn’t a few shades darker from built up grease at the moment.

              Patrick pulled himself tighter against Pete, dreading waking up properly. Pete was a goddamn space heater, and being next to him made Patrick feel a little bit safer, as it had since the first time they had been kidnapped together. Being this close to him felt like there was at least one person in the world standing between Patrick and certain doom.

              “Why are you doing that?” Pete whispered, so low Patrick wasn’t sure whether he was meant to hear it. Patrick swallowed, readjusted himself to a more comfortable position on the spongy soil, and took a deep breath before replying, because he could tell by the tone of Pete’s voice that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

              “Why am I doing what?” he asked. “Spooning? Because if we said ‘no homo’ every time the four of us ended up sharing a kingsized bed-”

              “Why do you even want to be next to me?” Pete asked in a voice far too tortured for as early as it was in the morning. Patrick shrugged, knowing Pete could feel the movement on his back even though he wasn’t facing Patrick.

              “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we are sort of friends with each other,” Patrick said, and Pete snorted.

              “This is my fault,” he said.

              “So?” Patrick shot back. Pete rolled over, facing Patrick with tired and red-rimmed eyes.

              “You’re not denying it,” he said. Patrick shrugged again.

              “It is your fault,” he said fairly. Pete made a face, and Patrick grimaced. “What? Look, I didn’t want to say that I told you so-”

              “Liar,” Pete said, but there was the glimmer of a smile on his face. “You revel in feeling superior.”

              “Yeah, you’re right, I do. I told you so, but to be fair, I also told Andy so, and Joe so, and the reef was pretty, I guess,” Patrick admitted. “Not worth all this bullshit, but pretty. I don’t know, man, are you asking why I’m not mad at you?”

              “Yes,” Pete said.

              “Well, I’m not mad at you because firstly, that would be a waste of time when we could instead be finding a way out, secondly because you’re beating yourself up enough for all four of us, but mostly because I’m just not mad at you,” Patrick said. He wrapped one arm over Pete and gave him an encouraging smile. “We’re gonna find a way out of here. And if you really want me to get pissed at you, I’m sure I can work up to it once we’re well fed and back on dry land.”

              “You know how to cheer a guy up,” Pete said, but he looked significantly calmer. A shrieking noise that sounded eerily similar to fork tines being dragged across a plate rang out and Patrick sat up, hands clapped over his ears. The sound stopped when he stood up all the way, and he gave Pete a dark look.

              “Ready for the day?” Pete asked.

              “Over the moon,” Patrick muttered. He staggered over to the window in the tank, relieved that, as much as he would have loved to have a toothbrush, he didn’t need to do too much grooming to get ready for this particular interview.

              A group of young mermaids were already gathered, there flat black eyes wide as Patrick settled himself and forced himself to smile at them. Some gasped at the gesture, and others giggled nervously. They were a shy group, it seemed, which was a relief to Patrick.

              “Don’t worry,” he gurgled out in mermish, and some of them skittered backwards. “I don’t bite. Not as much as all of you do, anyway,” he teased, flashing his smile again. “I’m a vegetarian, for the most part.”

              That was all it took for the little ones to explode with questions, raising their almost-but-not-quite humanoid hands as high as they could, desperate to catch his eye.

              “Um, you,” Patrick said, pointing to a girl in the front.

              “Is it true that humans urinate on each other while they mate?” the girl asked in a clear voice, the rest of her class erupting into grossed out noises. Patrick made a face too before shrugging.

              “I mean, some of them do, but it’s not a common thing to the best of my knowledge,” he said. The same girl’s hand flew up into the air again, and Patrick pointed at her again.

              “What do you mean ‘to the best of your knowledge’?” she demanded. “You are a human. You should know.”

              “Hey, I’m just one human. We’re all different,” Patrick apologized.

              “But surely you have universal customs,” she insisted.

              “Um, there are a lot of different cultures,” Patrick hedged. “I can tell you about mine?”

              The girl sighed, clearly disappointed, and Patrick fought hard not to roll his eyes. Tough crowd.

              There was the usual slew of questions: What’s your favorite color? What’s it like where there’s no water? Why are you wearing that? Patrick answered them a little robotically, but he tried to keep himself engaged for the sake of the kids. Usually if one of the children asked him about home, the zoo workers would try and steer the question away, but Patrick insisted on answering with a firm and unfriendly smile.

              That day, the question came from a boy that looked smaller than the rest of his classmates, too timid to raise his hand until time was nearly up, but the moment he did Patrick called on him.

              “I- I was just wondering if you’re happy here?” he spoke timidly, looking terrified that Patrick had noticed him.

              “Am I happy here?” Patrick asked, trying to buy himself some time. Obviously he wasn’t, but he wanted to think of something to say that wouldn’t give a little kid all the gory details. “Well, I mean, it could be worse,” he said lamely. The precocious girl’s hand shot into the air, and Patrick called on her.

              “Are you miserable or something?” she asked.

              “Um, I mean,” Patrick eyed the security, but they hadn’t stepped in yet. “I mean, I miss home, of course. I miss my family a lot. My mom especially. But,” he swallowed, and his throat suddenly felt too thick to continue. He didn’t want to start crying in front of these kids, but he could feel tears welling up in his eyes.

              “How come you can’t see your mom?” the little boy asked, and suddenly Patrick hated him. Hated all of these stupid school children, even though it wasn’t their fault. He didn’t want to answer this question day after day, be stuck here for even a second longer. But he swallowed down the burst of hatred and took a deep breath.

              “Because I’m stuck here,” he said. “And she’s very far away. She doesn’t even know I’m alive,” he said, and some of the moisture in his eyes spilled over. Someone’s hand lay lightly on his shoulder and Patrick shook it off, rubbing his eyes and straightening his shoulders as he tried to compose himself.

              “What’s that?” another mermaid asked.

              “Tears,” he said quietly. “Humans- they cry when they’re sad. And it makes me sad to think about my family.”

              “But why can’t you see your mom?” the little boy protested.

              “I’m not allowed to! I’m not here by choice!” Patrick shouted, and the boy shrank back, looking scared.

              “But… they rescued you,” the girl said, sounding unsure for the first time.

              “Yeah, I guess,” Patrick said. “It- it could be worse here. I mean, uh, we’re treated humanely, I suppose. Better than humans treat sharks and dolphins and stuff in aquariums,” he laughed wetly. The blurriness in his eyes delayed him from seeing the reaction of all the mermaids for a moment too long, at which point Patrick realized that none of them were laughing.

              “Aquariums?” the girl asked. Her already gray and scaly face looked paler than usual. Even the security guards looked more horrified and enthralled than angry. Patrick swallowed, knowing it was too late to pull back.

              “Uh-huh,” Patrick said, nodding. He swiped his hand across his eyes to wipe away any lingering tears. “I mean- you know, you guys have terrariums where you keep land creatures, and we have aquariums where we keep water creatures,” he said. The girl looked just as horrified as everyone else, but she was the only one that had the tenacity to keep asking questions.

              “But that’s… that’s wrong,” she said. “Did you say you kept sharks?”

              “ _I_ don’t keep sharks!” Patrick said quickly. “I don’t approve of it at all, none of us do, but yes, some humans keep sharks in aquariums. And dolphins and whales. They make the dolphins do tricks for food and it’s pretty horrible over all.”

              It was as though he had yelled “bomb” on an airplane. The sea broke into pandemonium, some of the kids looking like they were going to start crying as well and parents and workers alike looking terrified of Patrick. The irrational anger from earlier overcame Patrick again with a vengeance.

              “What are you so disgusted by? How is that any different from me being here?” he demanded, and another wave of horror and confusion rolled over the crowd.

              “I’m just trying to say that I understand and you should to! If humans knew about mermaids they would keep them too!” The voices of everyone in the crowd rose as they all clamored to yell something at Patrick, questions or accusations or sympathy: he couldn’t tell the difference. The gurgling was loud and unintelligible when he could not make out individual voices.

              “Shit, what did you say to them?” Joe gaped. Patrick found that he was shaking his head, suddenly afraid to respond. One of the scientists or zookeepers hanging around the back of the crowd was staring him down, glassy black eyes narrowed and mouth pulled back so just the tips of his fangs showed.

              “I just…” Patrick trailed off, fixated by the murderous look the mermaid was giving him, “...got caught off guard and then… mentioned SeaWorld. They didn’t realize it worked both ways.”

              “That seems a little dim witted, given the similarities of our races,” Andy said, but he looked nervous. “They understand we don’t support SeaWorld, right?”

              “Of course, I told them that,” Patrick snapped. “But the kids look scared.”

              “Shit, I’d be scared if I knew this could’ve happened to me when I was a kid,” Joe said, disgruntled. He paused for just a moment before saying “I mean. We don’t have to do tricks for food. So there’s that.”

              Patrick shushed him and leaned in closer to the window. He wanted to know what the mermaids were saying, but the gurgling was difficult to discern when everyone was speaking all at once.  

              “I think that’s all for now, kids, say goodbye to the human!” an orderly voice called. The mermaid who had spoken over the others, their teacher, it seemed, shot Patrick one last fearful look before swimming away, and Patrick pressed himself to the glass, frustrated.

              “It’s not like I keep fish!” he called. “I’m just-” some of the younger mermaids turned back to him, eyes wide. “I just want to show you why this is wrong,” he finished lamely.

              The brave little girl hung around the longest, her head cocked to one side. She looked like she wanted to say something to Patrick, but wasn’t sure how to say it.

              “I hope you get out of here,” she said after a long pause. “After all, you’re a terrible human specimen. We need someone more well versed in human culture.” She flitted away after speaking, leaving Patrick face-to-gills with a reasonably sized angry mob of mermaids.

              The only silver lining of the moment was that many of them weren’t angry with him. Many were teachers or scientists that were crying out about the humans treatment being inhumane, and injustice. Patrick felt a little disgruntled that no one had previously thought that this might be cruelty, but mostly he felt frightened by the ones still saying that nothing was wrong, that humans were stupid and sensitive animals and that this new information changed nothing. Amidst all the shouting, Patrick decided that his voice was no longer needed and he stepped back, giving his band a nervous looking grin.

              “Well, let no one say Patrick Stump doesn’t know how to rile up a crowd,” Pete said, smirking. Patrick groaned.

              “Jesus, I hope I didn’t make things harder on the mermaids that were already planning on breaking us out,” he moaned, and Andy shrugged.

              “Maybe you made their numbers stronger. Maybe the mermaids will revolt and the zoo will let us go officially,” Andy said. “Either way, I think you got out of your job for a while.”

              “Good, I’m exhausted,” Patrick said, laying down on the ground. He hoped they would let him keep the wetsuit when he got home. He wanted the pleasure of burning it.

              It took a while for the mermaids to get a hold of the situation. The lot of them argued for a while before the zookeepers managed to shove most of the guests away from the tank and agreed, from what Patrick could pick up, that no matter what their different views were that Patrick ought to go on talking to children.

              “You think we should bring in the next class?”

              “Do you think he’s up for it?”

              “He’s been up for it all week, dickbags, I don’t see a difference now,” Patrick called, and he imagined that the mermaids would have blushed if they could have.

              The rest of the day was much calmer. Bored out of his mind, Patrick drew simple swirling shapes in the dirt while he answered questions about weather and history and politics, referring to Andy or Pete when he didn’t know an answer. When asked what he missed most about home, he started listing foods instead, which had the unfortunate side effect of making him quite hungry, but let to much less sobbing from the kids. No matter how he felt about being locked up in a cage, Patrick didn’t see any reason to make children cry.

              He noticed that there were far more stern faced adults lining the back than usual, and far less of them recording his statements than usual, which led him to believe that they weren’t the usual span of scientists there to study him. Still, if they were security or some measure put in place to stop a revolt, they needn’t have worried. Patrick kept the subjects benign as he talked. Eventually, the swirls in the dirt turned into music notes, and he started humming to himself in between two of the classes that were being shunted out more rapidly than usual due to all the lost time.

              “What are you doing?” a mermaid asked him. Patrick looked up, eyebrows furrowed.    

              “What do you mean?” he asked wearily. The mermaid cocked his head, swimming a little closer.

              “You were making noise,” he said, almost accusingly. Patrick shrugged, turning the majority of his attention back to the patterns he was drawing in the dirt, no longer music notes but bars and shorthand that, were he to have GarageBand open in front of him, would mean something to him.

              “I was just humming,” he sighed, “Is that a riot inducing idea?”

              “It sounded musical,” the man said.

              “That would make sense, given that we are musicians,” Patrick said, fighting to keep from sounding patronizing.

              The mermaid gaped at him. “You have music?” he asked, wide eyed.

              “Did I not just say we were musicians?” Patrick snapped. “Where have you been? I talk to the kids about this all the time.”

              “I’m just maintenance,” the man said, webbed hands held up above his head. “I don’t get to hang around when you talk to the guppies.”

              “Guppies?” Patrick asked.

              “Nickname for children. Where I’m from, anyway,” he said. He looked down, not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “I think it’s great that you talk to them. They’re all gonna grow up into primatologists now, haha.”

              Patrick shrugged, not thinking that he really needed to respond, going back to drawing in the dirt.

              “What do you mean you’re musicians?” the mermaid asked. Patrick rolled his eyes.

              “We are people who play music?” Patrick said. “We wrote an album full of songs, some important people thought they could give us money so we could make them money, and we got signed to a label and now we get paid to make music and play it in front of crowds. We’re sort of famous and we get much more attention every time Pete takes his shirt off. What does musician mean here?”

              “None of that,” the merman said, wide-eyed. “And, um, all of that didn’t quite translate. Half of the terms you said came out in human-speak.”

              “Figures,” Patrick said. “You must not have words for it.”

              “You get paid to make music?” the man said, looking dubious.

              “Music is… pretty important to humans.”

              “Can I hear it?” he asked suddenly, his face eager.

              “What?” Patrick asked. “I mean, why? It probably sounds like shit to you, and anyway, I don’t have any instruments.”

              “Can you just sing it?” the man pleaded.

              “I mean, I’m the singer, I guess, but,” Patrick shrugged again, conscious of his band not far behind him. “I don’t know. It feels sort of conceited.”

              “I really want to hear you sing,” he said earnestly.

              For some reason, Patrick nodded. He didn’t know why, except something in the mermaid’s eyes seemed needful.

              Patrick still couldn’t quite bring himself to sing a Fall Out Boy song, not down here, not with his band right there. He puzzled for a moment over what to sing, before starting as quietly as he could while still making himself heard through the thick glass. He closed his eyes and began, not bothering attempting to translate.

              “ _It’s a god awful small affair_

_To the girl with the mousy hair_

_But her mummy is yelling “no”_

_And her daddy has told her to go_

_But her friend is nowhere to be seen_

_Now she walks through her sunken dream_

_To the seat with the clearest view_

_And she’s hooked to the silver screen_

_But the film is a saddening bore_

_For she’s lived it ten times or more_

_She could spit in the eyes of fools_

_As they ask her to focus on_

 

_Sailors fighting in the dance hall_

_Oh man! Look at those cavemen go_

_It’s the freakiest show!_

_Take a look at the Lawman_

_Beating up the wrong guy_

_Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know_

_He’s in the best selling show_

_Is there life on Mars_?”

              Patrick’s eyes flew open before the second chorus, and he tapered off suddenly. He’d become taken away with the song and begun singing louder without even meaning to, and it appeared as though he had gathered a crowd. The maintenance mermaid was still floating just on the other side of the glass, looking transfixed, but behind him was a whole host of zookeepers, scientists, and what looked like the next class. Patrick pressed his lips shut, embarrassed, and the maintenance mermaid frowned.

              “Why did you stop?” he asked.

              “Sorry, I only sing in front of crowds when I’m getting paid,” Patrick said with a stiff little laugh. The mermaid turned around and jumped at the sight of the crowd.

              “I should be going, but,” he paused, looking at Patrick again with wide and adoring eyes, “That was incredible. You’re a good musician.”

              He swam away with the still unnerving speed of a shark, and Patrick waved at the new class of children.

              Some of the kids wanted to hear him sing again, but Patrick politely refused or turned the questions away as best he could. A few of the braver students came up to him afterwards and told him that they liked his weird human music.

              “So why are you singing David Bowie to the mermaids?” Joe asked in between classes. Patrick shrugged.

              “Maybe it’s like how some people on land listen to whale songs.”

              The day dragged on forever. Patrick hoped for another visit from the maintenance mermaid or the activists, but the latter wouldn’t come until late in the night, and the former seemed somewhat discouraged by Patrick’s less than warm conversation. So when the day finally came to an end and the last class filtered out, Patrick was only expecting dinner and sleep, when instead a rather larger than normal looking mermaid with very long greenish hair swam up to the window.

              Patrick waited for the mermaid to start talking first, but she remained silent, staring him down instead. The sensation was more than a little uncomfortable, and after a full minute of this, Patrick stood up to walk away.

              “You’re a very interesting creature, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice smoother and somehow drier sounding than most mermaids. A voice that sounded like bitter white wine.

              “So I’ve been told,” Patrick said stiffly.

              “I’ve been the owner of this zoo for a very long time and I know all the species in it well. Humans are the only animals I’ve ever seen that can actually want to die,” she said. “One of our rescues about twenty years back, he screamed and screamed and screamed at us. Of course, he wasn’t special like you. We thought he was just making noise, that he would get over it, until he pried a rock loose and slashed his wrists open with it.”

              Patrick flinched, and though she didn’t smile, he had a feeling that was the reaction she wanted.

              “We are not a sadistic species, you must realize that,” she said, with a flash of a jagged fanged smile. “We keep only rescues and those that were conceived and born in captivity. You would have died without us.”

              “We were swimming towards a boat!” Patrick snapped.

              “We saved you,” she repeated, slightly louder. “And you have the audacity to tell these frightening stories, to give nightmares to children, to threaten the people that love you-”

              “They do not love me!” Patrick yelled. “I’m a circus act!”

              “So I think!” she said, raising her voice as well, “That it is only fair if it goes both ways.” She leaned in very close to the glass. “If you do not pull your act together, become as amiable and child friendly as possible, we will take less pleasant measures to keep you in line.”

              “You’re here to threaten me?” Patrick asked with a snort.

              “No, Patrick,” she said, her voice gurgling in what almost passed for his name, or a horrible and strangulated version of it. “You and I both know that we wouldn’t dare hurt you. You are an invaluable resource to the scientific community. We could learn the language of another species, learn how to interact with human beings. You could bridge the gap between your world and ours,” she said, pressing in on the glass, her face manic and her words fervent. “But if you do not work with us you have three other less useful humans with you. And I have no qualms about making certain that your favorite human finds himself with a bowl of food much more toxic than usual.”

              Patrick had gone white. His hands clenched into fists as he looked up at the mermaid.

              “What. Favorite. Human.” he demanded.

              “The human you sleep with, the human you comfort, the damaged human you’re oh so protective of every moment you have the naivety to think we are not watching you.”

              A hysterical bubble of laughter rose up in Patrick’s throat. They had him in a corner and Pete wasn’t even human.

              “Do we understand each other?” she asked in a low voice, taking Patrick’s silence as pure fear. Patrick nodded, and she smiled, flashing her fangs once more.

              “I look forward to all the wonderful things we can do together,” she said, then turned around and swam away with a powerful swat of her tail.

              “What was all that about?” Pete asked. Patrick shook his head, trying to steady his voice and his face for a moment before he responded.

              “I just really hope that we get out of here soon,” Patrick said.

***

              Dinner that night was a more somber affair than usual. Patrick explained the threat the owner of the zoo had given them in a quick and low tone. Somehow the idea of poison in the food made Joe’s already disgusting slop even less appealing, and hungry as he was, he couldn’t force himself to eat any of it.

              “They definitely threatened to kill us?” Andy asked again.

              “For the hundredth time, _yes_ , this is not some gross mistranslation. If I don’t start playing the nice and docile dumb talking animal then things are going to go very badly for us,” Patrick said.

              “And I suppose they don’t care that you’re telling us about this?” Joe asked.

              “Why would they? I mean, what could you do by knowing? Not eat? It would kill you either way,” Patrick said.

              They sat in silence for a moment. No one was eating. Joe couldn’t blame them. It was disgusting, and more often than not Joe saw scales glimmering in the mush, but he knew he ought to tell them to eat something. They could be escaping at any day, and when they did, they would need their strength. Andy turned a dry piece of seaweed over and over in his hands, but didn’t take a bite.

              Joe missed the sun. He wanted to say he missed Marie or his mom or internet or food but after a week without it, all he wanted to see was sunlight. A painful thought struck him.

              “Oh, man,” he muttered, looking over his shoulder to the feral humans where they surrounded the pool of water, babbling to each other and picking twigs and leaves out of one anothers’ hair.

              “What?” Pete asked, frowning at the no doubt pained color Joe’s aura had taken.

              “I just realized that they’ve never seen sunlight,” Joe said quietly.

              “I don’t think they ever will,” Andy said quietly, then made a face. “It’s- it is better if we leave them here, right? They wouldn’t know how to adjust to life on land, right?”

              “Right,” Joe said firmly.

              “Have you seen what happens to children who never learned a language? Never learned social norms. They’re… they’re better off here,” Pete said.

              “I guess you’re right,” Andy said. “I just…”

              “Don’t wanna leave someone here,” Patrick said. “Yeah. I know.”

              The silence stretched long and thin as the false night closed in on them. Joe could feel the hopelessness creeping in through all of them in the pack bond, and he tried to find a way to lessen it.

              “What do you wanna do first thing when we get home?” he asked, hoping his tone sounded more bright than desperate. Patrick looked like he wanted to say something biting and sarcastic, but Pete jumped in before he could talk.

              “I wanna go out to eat at some place greasy. McDonalds,” he sighed, staring down at the fish paste.

              “And it’s still gross,” Andy said.

              The conversation effortlessly carried back into the daydreaming of home, as it always did. Joe was relieved as the pack bond slowly but surely loosened up, but he knew it was only temporary. How long, he wondered, could this last? How long did it take to stage a breakout from a zoo? Probably significantly longer when they needed who knew how many impossible to find scientific instruments. Some kind of tank outside of the zoo’s control to carry them in. Something to move the tank with. The list seemed endless, and Joe wondered if they would escape before the rest of their world moved on. If it took them years, would Marie move on? Would their families give up and have funerals. Would they be written off as a great tragedy in music history? Would there be anything left to come back to?

              Unlike the others, he tried not to voice his fears, not the serious ones, anyway. They weren’t getting anywhere if no one had faith that they could.

              They fell asleep soon after, as there was precious little else to do, and Joe curled up, letting fear and anxiety gnaw away at his stomach and his chest. Questions racketed through his mind, an endless stream of _What will you do when you need to turn into a wolf? What if you die trying to escape? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay down here? Wouldn’t it be safer? What if the others don’t survive and you do?_ Until he finally drifted into uneasy sleep.

              In his dream, he was back in the desert that he always dreamed of, basking in the warm sun. He tilted his head up to the white-blue sky to drink in the warmth when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

              “Funny, I thought you Chicago boys had some sort of weird vendetta against the desert,” the voice said. Joe turned around, annoyed at having been interrupted, to see Ryan Ross. Ryan was leaning on the hood of a gorgeous red sports car, wearing far too many layers for a climate that hot and enormous sunglasses that took up half his face. His jaw kept moving, and Joe thought he was chewing gum for a moment before he realized that Ryan just kept clicking his tongue. It was really quite annoying.

              “Aren’t you camped out in some cabin in the middle of mountains in Montana?” Joe asked.

              “We’re in some cabin in the middle of the mountains in Nevada, actually, and I graciously let you pick the dream location,” Ryan said. He paused and looked Joe up and down. “I’m glad you’re alive. We were getting worried.”

              “I think you like being cryptic,” Joe said. “I think it makes you feel important knowing that everyone but you is completely lost when you have a conversation.

              “Obviously everyone was concerned when Fall Out Boy was missing, but I was especially concerned given that I couldn’t see any of you. It’s like there’s static, interference or something,” Ryan said, ignoring Joe’s jab at him. “I was pretty sure you were alive, but I had to double check. You like the dream? It’s a pretty advanced piece of magic, though you took long enough to fall asleep. I’d been waiting for ten hours here.”

              “Magic? This isn’t some weird oracle power?” Joe asked.

              “Nope,” Ryan said, uncrossing his arms and sliding off of the car. “It took the guys and I all week to find all the ingredients and get the ritual right. It would’ve been easier if we were still in a pack together, but it’s lucky we were in one at all, or this would’ve been damn near impossible. Anyway, the world is in a panic and by the world I mean only the people that know you personally, as the official word to the press is that one of you is dealing with a personal issue. The label is trying to frame it as a death in the family, but all the girls online think somebody knocked a girl up.” Ryan smirked again, and even though it was irksome, Joe was still just desperately happy to be talking to someone not in his band.

              “So tell me,” Ryan said, “Where the hell are you?”

              “We went on a scuba trip and got kidnapped by mermaids and are now being held as an exhibit in a mer-zoo,” Joe said quickly, “Patrick speaks mermish for some reason and we are the greatest attraction in the mer-world. We’re thousands of feet deep in the ocean and have no way of getting up to land other than relying on the sympathy of some magic sharks.”

              Joe was a little proud of himself that he managed to make Ryan’s jaw drop. Ryan wasn’t a very easy person to startle.

              “A _mer-zoo_?” Ryan asked after a moment, rubbing his temples. He took off the stupid, oversized sunglasses and blinked in the bright sunlight for a moment before turning his sharp gaze on Joe. “How the hell did you get yourselves kidnapped by mermaids?”

              “It isn’t as though we asked them to do it!” Joe yelled, struck with indignation. “We weren’t looking for trouble!”

              “And yet,” Ryan sighed. He rubbed his temples again. “Okay. Shit. Do you know where in the ocean you are?”

              “YES, OF COURSE, THEY GAVE ME A MAP!” Joe yelled. Ryan rolled his eyes. “How the hell would I know where we are? We went on a scuba cruise to the Great Barrier Reef, but given that we can’t see the sun, I think it’s safe to say we’re no longer in the reef.”

              “Well, that’s something to start with I suppose, but I can hardly rent a submarine,” Ryan said unhappily. “Any ideas, fearless pack leader?”

              “A group of activists said they were going to try and get us out of here,” Joe said. “They didn’t say how or when, just to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

              “And you trust them?” Ryan asked.

              “Do I have a choice?” Joe asked. Ryan shrugged.

              “Probably not. Look, I have to wake up now, but if I haven’t heard from you in a week I’ll check back in, okay?”

              Joe barely had the chance to nod before Ryan dissolved, leaving Joe alone in the dream desert until he was startled awake by the horrific screeching sound the mermaids used to wake up Patrick.

              “Never thought I could miss alarm clocks,” Patrick grumbled, and Joe threw his arm over his head, intent on falling immediately back asleep. Patrick had to be awake, sure, but Joe didn’t.

              After getting in a few more precious hours of sleep (though in reality, Joe knew he had been sleeping too much in the enclosure simply for lack of anything better to do) he rinsed off in the waterfall. One of the girls in the tank eyed him shyly, eventually giving him a very small smile.

              “You speak English?” Joe asked. She giggled a little, but showed no signs of comprehension. Joe sighed. “Parlez-vous francais? Tu hablas espanol?”

              She blinked up at him, fanning her eyelashes like she was trying to flirt. Joe grimaced and walked away quickly, promising to himself that he would teach her how to talk if he was there much longer. How many generations did it take to lose language? How quickly did humanity devolve? Joe didn’t think he really wanted the answer.

              Joe was hungry enough to eat that night, although only after checking with Patrick that the day had gone well and boring, which Patrick assured him it had. They were just ready to fall asleep again, long after the feral humans had disappeared to wherever they slept, when there was a banging on the glass window.

              Joe jolted up, heart pounding, and he made brief, hopeful eye contact with Andy before sprinting over to the window where the maintenance mermaid from the previous day was floating, a devious look in his eyes. He gurgled up at Patrick and Joe nudged Patrick before he could respond.

              “Translate,” Joe pleaded, and Patrick nodded.

              “He said he’s here to change the air filters, but that we need to get in a separate tank for him to do that. A smaller tank.” The mermaid gurgled something else, and Patrick frowned. “Also, that we need to get in a separate tank from the feral humans, in case they try to attack us.” He repeated, but Joe could see from his facial expression that there was more to it.

              “You think this is it?” Joe asked in a low voice, but Patrick just gave him a sharp look and jerked his head in the direction they first came from when they entered this godforsaken tank so long again.

              The four of them walked quickly and silently, their footsteps padded by the soil as they made towards the far end of the tank. The glass looked flat and just as hopeless as usual to Joe, when just as they approached it they saw another section of glass floating up to join with it. Joe’s heart hammered against his ribcage as the two pieces noiselessly pulled together and a large opening formed in the tank, leading to a much smaller tank, roughly the size of their old apartment’s kitchenette.

              The moment that all four of them stepped inside the small tank, the opening closed and the small glass box began drifting away. The maintenance mermaid swam up beside them for a moment, casting them a large and conspiratorial wink as he did. He gurgled something at Patrick, then turned tail and swam rapidly in the opposite direction.

              “What did he say?” Joe demanded, annoyed at having to prompt Patrick every time. Patrick looked a little wistful as he watched the mermaid swim off.

              “He said he hopes to hear more of our music someday,” he said.

              “Are we riding a tank all the way back to Australia?” Andy asked.

              It appeared mostly as though the tank was going up. It kept floating upwards until the lights of the human tank had all but faded beneath them, and the one dim light glowing in the tiny tank made the undersea excursion seem much more eerie. Joe kept looking at the glass and praying that there wasn’t enough pressure to make it crack. He thought he heard something from below, that distant horrible screeching noise that they woke up with, but no one was coming after them yet.

              It was agonizing as the lights beneath them began to flash, noise coming from below very distantly. Joe's hands were clenched into fists as they rose slowly, lazily drifting away from the clear and present danger beneath them. It wouldn't have been so horrible, Joe thought, if they could have done something. If it were possible for them to steer the tank, if they had offensive weapons, if they had any form of defense, it would be different, but they were sitting ducks.

              Once the lights beneath them had completely faded away, they began to relax. The whole situation was still nerve wracking, but they couldn’t stay tense forever. Joe had just leaned his back against one of the glass walls when there was a loud bang on the tank coming from right behind him, and he flew to the other side in terror.

              A large and ferocious looking mermaid was banging on the glass and gurgling, a too large crowd of especially wild looking mermaids forming behind him.Patrick sighed in relief as he listened.

              “It’s the activists. They're here to carry the tank once we’re out of range of the zoo proper.”

              “So he’s carrying us to Australia?” Andy asked in disbelief. Patrick said something in mermish to the man and as he replied, Patrick began to look nervous. The tank was still moving as the two of them spoke in rapid mermish. The merman eventually said something harshly and swam underneath the tank, grabbing it in his hands and swimming with it, a little slower going than when the tank was just moving.

              “What now?” Joe asked. Patrick looked far too concerned and Joe was far too stressed out to not be in the loop about whatever it was.

              “Probably nothing serious,” Patrick insisted, though he didn’t look like he was telling the truth. “Only, well, he’s not too good with directions, and since I can’t direct him either really… he said he’d let us out within a few miles of land. But it could be any land,” Patrick said.

              The gravity of that set in on Joe. People could swim for miles. It wasn’t pleasant, but they could do it. Still, if they were no longer near Australia, if a few miles ended up being a lot of miles, if they couldn’t swim in the right direction…

              Well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

***

              Pete wasn’t used to competent escape plans. He was used to half-formed escape plans were people got shot at or bitten and everything around them was already in figurative or literal flames. It was weird to be a part of a well organized escape. He had never broken in or out of somewhere so quietly, and given the security he knew the place had to have, he thought it was more than a little incredible that they hadn’t been stopped or killed.

              Pete also wasn’t particularly worried about where they were going to be let out. True, he was a worrier through and through, but at least he was good at swimming. Assuming they weren't made helpless by a storm again, it was something he could handle.

              Mostly, Pete took issue with how eerie the situation was. They were sitting in the same tank, wearing the same grimy wet suits, but now were being carried by a small army of punk looking mermaid activists. He tried to imagine how he could possibly describe it to someone else later: the undulating blue-gray water everywhere, the pervasive clamminess, him trying not to sit directly on top of where any of the mermaids were holding the glass and eventually just standing with his legs pressed tightly together and his arms crossed to give him some sense of security.

              “Do you think they’ll get in trouble? When they get back?” Andy asked. Patrick shrugged, then shouted something down at the mermaids. A noise like an air filter malfunctioning came back, and Patrick shrugged again.

              “They say they’ll be fine so long as they don’t get caught,” Patrick said. “And they don’t appear to think that that’s likely. So I’d say it’s alright.” His aura shone a sickly yellow-brown color of guilt, the thick and nearly opaque kind of guilt that usually accompanied getting something wonderful at someone else’s harm. Andy and Joe looked the same way, to a lesser degree, and Pete wondered what his own aura looked like. Probably similar, but a little less guilty than the others. He missed home desperately, and he’d been feeling so guilty for so long that it was as though he had been drained of the emotion.

              “Are we going higher up or closer to land first?” Pete asked absently. He was fidgeting with his wetsuit, pinching a piece of it and pulling it away from his body and letting it snap back over and over again.

              “I think we’re doing both but rising more,” Andy said, squinting up. “Yeah, I can see some light, but we’re also definitely going forward. Ugh, I wish I had my glasses with me.”

              “Hope the scuba company didn’t throw our shit out,” Joe sighed.

              “Wouldn’t that just be our luck?” Pete asked, rolling his eyes. Joe grinned, and Pete smiled back reflexively. He realized suddenly that he was excited. They were close to home, or land at the very least. And most coastlines were probably pretty heavily populated, he reasoned. Even if they ended up in the middle of nowhere, they could figure out something once they could move freely, he was sure of it. Ryan would see them, and they could easily get help once they weren’t thousands of feet underwater.

              “We’re actually leaving,” he whispered, holding one hand flat against the glass tank.

              “Holy shit, I think I can see the sun,” Patrick said, staring intently at the ceiling. Pete stared up as well and felt his heart drop out for a beat, because oh, oh yes, that was _definitely_ light. He could have cried as he saw it, faint and greenish, but light far above him.

              “Oh, man,” Joe whispered. They all were transfixed, staring at the light diffusing through the water. Pete ran a hand through his hair, taking in a deep and shuddering breath.

              “We must be close to the surface,” Andy said, his voice quiet, reverent.

              “How close?” Joe asked with a shallow laugh.

              “Couple hundred feet,” Andy shrugged. “God, I can’t believe it. We actually-”

              “SHIT!” Patrick yelled, and the tank lurched forward, tilting slightly to the side for the first time. Pete fell to the side, cracking his shoulder with a horrible noise on the side of the tank. He couldn’t find his footing anymore, the tiny room they were in was crooked and suddenly being buffeted by currents that it had seemed previously impervious to. Pete blinked, unable to see straight for a moment.

              The tank lurched again, a shudder running through the glass, and Pete was flung into a corner, landing with his elbow jammed into someone’s stomach. He forced his eyes to focus as he blinked this time, trying to ignore the dizziness overcoming him.

              The zoo had come for them, it seemed. The very large and severe looking female mermaid that had threatened Patrick was shouting, large bubbles flying from her mouth as she pointed up at the tank. The mermaids looked too similar for Pete to easily tell the difference, but from the amount of fighting going on beneath them, it was clear that the zoo had sent at least as many people in security as there were activists.

              “Oh God,” Pete whimpered. He tried to drag himself up and off of Joe, the person he was squishing, but the tank was knocked again by someone in the fight, and he was thrown forward, slamming headlong into the other side of the tank.

              “Fuck, Pete, are you okay?” someone yelled. Pete’s head hurt too badly to easily identify who had spoken, but he nodded, sending a jolt of pain through his neck and up into his head as he did. He rolled back over, and realized that somewhere in the jostling the light had been knocked hard enough that it had turned out, and the dim, gray green light that was just barely enough to see was sunlight filtered down through the water.

              “Oh god, they did not want us to go,” Pete groaned, grabbing his forehead with one hand.

              “There’s too many of them,” Patrick said. He was seated on the floor of the tank, but he had his hands and feet planted on the ground as well to hold himself still. His eyes were wide with horror as he stared at the scene beneath them. “They can’t make it.”

              Pete didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to look down, but he could still see the flurry of bubbles rising up around the sides of the tank. He didn’t want to hear the gnashing and ripping and gurgling coming from beneath him, but he could hear that too. He swallowed hard.

              “What do we…?” he trailed off, staring at Patrick. Patrick looked down, winced, and rolled over so that his face was up against the glass. He seemed to hear something from the unintelligible noises coming from beneath them, and he nodded, pulling himself up into a seated position again, only for them all to be knocked to the side as the tank got hit.

              “Fuck! Okay, shit,” Patrick said, running a hand through his hair, “Okay, shit, fuck, we don’t have long.”

              “LONG UNTIL WHAT?” Joe yelled. Patrick winced. Gulped again.

              “Would you rather get taken back or try something that could end up deadly?” he asked.

              “What does that mean?” Andy demanded.

              “They didn’t say, but I think it means they can break the tank now!” Patrick shouted back. “But we could still be over a hundred feet underwater and no fucking clue how far from land so it’s a hell of a risk.”

              Pete glanced down at the wild looking mermaids for the first time since it had started. The zoo owner, the terrifying woman, had a mouthful of something that was streaming black clouds of color into the water.

              “Risk it,” Pete said, in almost perfect unison with Joe and Andy. Patrick nodded, then screamed something at the top of his lungs in mermish.

              Pete barely had a second to brace himself. Something hit the tank again, and it gave one last ominous shudder beneath his feet and all through the small room. Pete just saw the edges of the spiderweb crack in the glass creeping up past eye level before the tank imploded.

              Pete had just enough presence of mind to throw his arm over his eyes as he was deluged with water and broken glass. The floor broke under his feet and the ceiling caved in over his head, and his first sensation was that of freezing cold. In quick succession, he then felt the stinging pain of getting cut in too many places, all at once, and then he felt horrible pressure.

              Flinging his arms away from his face, Pete forced his eyes to open in spite of the salty sting. Puffs of blood were swirling out of cuts on his hands and arms, and the mermaids beneath them were staring up in horror. Pete kicked in the water, only hurting his leg on something. The sun suddenly looked much further away, but he was rising to the surface of the water much faster than he had been previously. He kicked out again and flailed his arms, aiming for the surface. It was still so dark under the water, and he was caught up enough in protecting his face that he hadn’t thought to take a deep breath, and his lungs were quickly starting to protest the situation at hand.

              Later, Pete would feel guilty for not taking the time to check on anyone else in his band, but in that moment all he wanted was to reach the surface, to feel air on his skin and get far out of the reach of the mermaids once and for all. Natural human buoyancy was on his side, while time was not. He was still so dizzy, still bleeding, in shock from the cold, running out of air, and on top of all that, he could hear the water-muffled sounds of mermaids in pursuit of him.

              The surface was getting closer, tantalizingly close now. Pete could see the surface of the waves, he could distinguish the circle of the sun, see birds perched on top of the ocean. He was only twenty feet deep, ten feet deep, five feet deep…

              The moment his head broke the surface, Pete was inhaling with all his might, choking down a lot of seawater as he did. The sky was the palest blue, the sun white hot in the sky. Pete just barely caught a glimpse of it before the world around him, water and sky and horizon all started spinning and colliding, tilting off kilter with Pete, and he fell face first back into the ocean.

              Pete’s head was filled with the roar of crashing waves, even against the crushing blackness that was all he could see. He couldn’t breathe, but he could feel the saltwater pressing in against his mouth and nose. He was spinning like a top in the midst of a storm, something arcane whirling in the eye of a hurricane while his own storm drowned him. Storms, god, he needed a storm, but he couldn’t conjure that kind of power. He didn’t want a storm, he wanted the sun, but all there was was wind and water and glass, the fearsome mermaids encroaching in on him, his eyes stinging with water until he had to close them, if he opened them he would see the mermaids and it would be real, couldn’t open his eyes-

              “-still hasn’t opened his eyes, you don’t think he’s-?”

              “Of course not!” Patrick growled. Patrick! Pete’s eyes flew open and he coughed, some of the ocean water spurting from his lungs as he did. Everything was too bright, and the force of his coughing sent Pete way off balance again, and he clung to the nearest solid thing he could find, and it felt suspiciously like hair.

              “OW! Jesus, Pete!” Andy yelled, and then there were hands on Pete, holding him somewhat still. Or, as still as they could be in the water.

              The blurry picture started to come together, piece by slow moving piece. Andy was holding Pete upright, which was good, because Pete’s head and what he saw were still dizzy and very much at odds with each other, and he doubted he could have stayed upright without help. Joe and Patrick were treading water nearby, and they appeared to be somewhere in the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight. The water was freezing, but the sun was beating down on Pete’s head, and all was silent except for the rushing of waves and the cawing of birds.

              Pete tried to croak out a question, any question, really, but his throat was ragged. He coughed again, water dribbling down his chin. He turned to Patrick and tried to make a questioning face. Luckily, Patrick was quick on the uptake.

              “We got out,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “We all made it up to the surface, and then Joe had the idea that we should try and float for a while, just act dead until the mermaids swam away. We didn’t realize until they left that you hadn’t heard and you were actually unconscious. We’ve just been trying to wake you up since then. Luckily, it was pretty easy to convince them that we were dead since we’re all bleeding and shit,” Patrick shrugged. “And you’re- you’re okay?”

              “I’m okay,” Pete croaked out. It hurt to speak, but he found he could do it again. “I just made it to the surface and- I don’t know, I passed out.”

              “Decompression,” Andy said, his face pinched with worry. “We’ve all got it. Humans aren’t really supposed to change pressure levels that fast, and causes, well, a lot of problems. Just looks like it hit you the hardest.”

              “Hardest or first,” Joe said, throwing a quick glance at Patrick. Patrick, who looked winded but otherwise not nearly as awful as Pete felt, seemed oblivious to the concern, and just kept looking at Pete.

              “How do you feel?” he asked.

              “Like shit, how the fuck do you think I feel?” Pete asked. He wanted to push away from Andy, but he didn’t have the energy to. Treading water sounded like far too much effort, and after over a week without enough exercise, he already felt like he had run a marathon. “So, how the hell do we get back to land?”

              The other three looked between each other, then back at Pete with pained faces.

              “We’ve got no clue,” Joe said. “We’ve got no compass, no map, nothing to make a signal with, or even a boat to ride this out in. The don’t really cover situations this dire in the boy scouts.”

              Pete felt panic rising in his chest, but he tried to ignore it.

              “What direction were we last heading?” he asked.

              “We don’t know,” Andy said. “I mean, you saw that, it was a little hard to keep track of which direction we were facing.”

              “Well…” Pete struggled to think of something else to say. “Well… shit.”

              “Pretty much,” Joe said.

              “If it were windier I might be able to tell what direction land was, but we’d have to be pretty close to it,” Andy said.

              “We are close to it,” Patrick reminded him. “So we just wait for wind?”

              “That’s a terrible plan, but we don’t have a better one,” Andy said.

              “Are you kidding me? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” Pete screamed. He fell out of Andy’s arms and lost a little volume as he had to exert himself to keep treading water. “We have to get back! The longer we wait the more dangerous this gets! I’m bleeding and we’re hurt and we have to get back!”

              “Do you have a better plan?” Andy snapped. And Pete didn’t, not really, but they had to get back, had to get to land and dry off and never speak of the ocean again.

              “Can’t you smell anything?” Pete pleaded after a moment. “Either of you?”

              Both Joe and Andy looked mildly offended, though Andy was the first to speak up.

              “No, I don’t smell anything. Look with your fae eyes, asshole, do you see the land’s aura? If I could see or hear or smell anything, I would let you know, but who knows if it’s even close enough to sense. I’m not exactly running at the top of my game here,” Andy said, his aura aching with frustration over all else, the sensation that he should have noticed something, could be doing better.

              “We’re all a little on the injured side, buddy,” Joe said, his voice low. “Injured, dehydrated, sick, underfed, you know, all that good stuff.”

              “Dehydrated too?” Pete asked wearily.

              “Well, we weren’t planning for this, we inhaled a lot of salt water, the sun is bright as hell,” Joe said. He looked miserable, but Pete wasn’t focused on him anymore.

              “Dehydrated,” he repeated, and he felt suddenly, stupidly hopeful. “I have an idea.”

              Joe raised his eyebrows at him, and Patrick looked hopeful. Guilt coursed through Pete, but he forced himself to look Patrick in the eyes.

              “It’s not a pleasant idea,” he said slowly. “But it could get us out of here.” He turned his gaze to Andy, and watched all of their expressions fall, one by one. “We just need to give Andy more of an edge so he can help us get out of here. Rehydrate him, as it were.” His eyes flicked back to Patrick, who looked more resigned than anything else. To Pete’s surprise, it was Joe who protested first.

              “No, fuck that, absolutely not,” Joe said sharply. “We just have to wait for a bit of wind, or if we’re so close to a coastline we should see a boat or something eventually. There’s no goddamn reason-!”

              “I’ll do it,” Patrick sighed. He kicked his way over to Andy and pushed wet hair off of his neck. “Make it count, though, I’m gonna be a useless swimmer after this. More useless than usual, mind you.”

              “Patrick, don’t be stupid!” Joe shouted. He turned to Andy, exasperated. “You’re going along with this?!”

              Andy winced, looking away from Joe. “I haven’t drank blood in weeks, dude. I’m gonna be in worse shape than a human if we go on like this in the sun for long.”

              “Come on,” Joe pleaded.

              “Patrick?” Andy looked miserable as he turned to him. Patrick nodded again, leaning over so that his neck was exposed. His aura was streaked with fear and determination as he held as still as he could in the water.

              “Make it count,” he said.

              Andy fell upon him at once, drinking with loud slurping sounds that made Pete feel a little sick to his stomach. Patrick let out a pained groan, but he held still while Andy lapped up the blood from his neck.

              After a minute of this, Pete unable to look at the two of them from a combination of guilt and disgust, Patrick’s quiet pain noises turned into soft groans.

              “That’s enough!” Joe snapped, and Andy pulled away with a moan. Pete turned back to them to watch Andy pull away from Patrick, swiping a stripe of red off of his chin with his tongue. Patrick began sinking into the water, but Andy deftly pulled him over with one arm, snapping in his face with his free hand.

              “Hey,” Andy said gently, “Patrick, come on, stay awake for me, okay?”

              Patrick scrunched up his face before opening his eyes. He looked pale and worse than he had before, but still like Patrick.

              “I’m not five,” he said. Then: “Jesus, thirsty?”

              “Very,” Andy said apologetically. “I feel much better. Thanks, man.”

              “No problem,” Patrick spoke in an easygoing tone, but he was lying, and his aura was faint enough to make Pete feel a little concerned. “Anything?”

              Andy looked around, took in a deep breath, and squinted as he turned in a circle in the water. He looked like he was about to deliver bad news when suddenly his eyes lit up.

              “Holy shit, yes!” he yelled. “I can see something that way!” he pointed off into the distance behind Pete. Pete couldn’t see anything, but Andy seemed certain. “There’s land over there! A few miles it looks like, but it’s right there!”

              “Fantastic,” Patrick said faintly.

              “Let’s go,” Joe said. “The sun’s not that high in the sky, and I can’t tell if it’s morning or evening. We don’t want to get caught out here at night.”

              “No worries: we’ve got it!” Andy crowed. “C’mon, we should get started as soon as we can.”

              No sooner had the words left his mouth than Andy was swimming a smooth, even breaststroke in the direction he had pointed. Pete followed, though he found that swimming straight was much more difficult than he remembered, he chalked it up to not being used to swimming adjacent to waves.

              The good news about a few miles of swimming was that Andy and Joe were physically superhuman, and that Pete was still in pretty fantastic physical shape, not hurt by the nearly professional athletic career he had when he was younger. Aside from being unable to stay right on track and needing someone to correct his direction every now and then, Pete was fine.

              Patrick was less so.

              Objectively, he hadn’t been in incredible shape in the first place, but having lost a lot of blood and probably being just as injured by the pressure change as Pete, he was moving agonizingly slowly. Patrick was trying his best, Pete could see it in his aura and the exertion on his face, but the sun kept rising (at least it was morning rather than afternoon) and they weren’t moving very far.

              Whenever one of them would look back at Patrick he would glare up at them and put on a temporary (and very ineffective) burst of speed, but it wasn’t cutting it.

              “This isn’t working,” Joe said, quietly as he could while still speaking over the waves. They had paused to take a breather, which had little point as they still had to tread water.

              “What do you want me to do?” Patrick snapped. He was out of breath and ash gray, but still fighting to stay up.

              “You can’t keep swimming,” Joe said, in a way that was both apologetic and firm. Pack voice. He knew what he was asking was more of an order than a request.

              “I’m fine!” Patrick lied, his voice cracking in the middle. He looked sad and furious as he realized that no one believed him.

              “So what, you want me to just wait here?” he asked.

              “Are you crazy?” Joe looked taken aback. “Andy’s going to take care of you.”

              It took a fair bit of finagling to get Patrick more or less on Andy’s back, his arms slung loosely around Andy’s neck. He kept throwing Pete martyred expressions, and Pete gave him sympathetic smiles in return.

              Not long after that, though, Pete discovered he had problems of his own. The shimmering sun was blindingly bright and confusing as it reflected off of the water. Seeing was much more difficult than Pete thought it should be, and he kept running into Joe and Andy, and occasionally simply plunging headlong into the water, because he thought he was only imagining it directly in front of his face. On top of all that, with Patrick safely someone else’s problem, Pete was rapidly becoming what was slowing them down as the sun kept him in a state of dreamlike unawareness.

              “Pete,” Joe said in a low, warning voice, but Pete shook his head and tried to focus. The sky and the water were blurry, but he could keep going. He sped up and focused all of his attention on swimming straightforward, moving his arms, kicking his legs, settling into a rhythm…

              Pete wasn’t sure when he collapsed in on himself, and was only distantly aware of being dragged up to the surface by Joe and Andy. Their conversation sounded fuzzy to Pete, and he had difficulty making out the words in it, something to do with concussions and swimming, but it was all very difficult to discern.

              Joe was asking him then, very gently, to wrap his arms around Andy’s neck too, to try and hold still and remember to kick when he could. Pete nodded absently, although things were still unclear. He held onto whatever was in front of him and soon realized they were moving much quicker than he had been able to. He smiled, letting the sea spray against his teeth, then, disliking the taste, buried his face in the wetsuit just in front of his face. He felt seasick. At least he assumed this was what seasickness felt like.

              “Pete, Pete, what’s wrong?” Patrick’s voice was low and pleading. He sounded sleepy and confused too. Pete looked up and tried to smile reassuringly at him. Patrick was okay, and that mattered. He smelled like salt and sweat, but underneath that, he was still Patrick, laying right next to him.

              “I love you,” Pete murmured, then laid his head down again.

***

              “They slowing you down?” Joe asked.

              Andy grunted. He was in the best shape, but swimming with the weight of two people on top of himself was a little overwhelming, and he was doing his best to continue at the pace he had been going.

              “You’re one to talk,” he grunted, giving Joe a strained smile. “Doggy paddling.”

              “That’s racist,” Joe said, flicking a little water at Andy. Andy laughed, then sighed, still pushing forward. Joe said he could see something, but the outline of land that Andy could see wasn’t very defined. Even so, he was certain it was land in the distance. He couldn’t let himself believe he had imagined it, that it was some sort of reverse mirage. There was nothing for it but to keep going.

              “How are they?” Andy asked after a minute.

              “Fine. Honestly, I think they’re more passed out than unconscious, from the read I’m getting through the bond.” Joe laughed a little, but it sounded forced.

              “Listen,” Andy began. “I just want to tell you I’m really-”

              “I get it,” Joe said. He had stopped swimming and stretched, rubbing his neck with a pained face for a moment before turning to Andy. “I do. I understand why you had to do it, I just wish you didn’t have to. I don’t like feeling that,” he said. He wouldn’t meet Andy’s eyes, which worked out as Andy had to keep swimming or potentially dump his passengers into the sea.

              “You can feel that through the bond?” he asked guiltily.

              “Not physically,” Joe said. Andy’s face pulled together, confused. Joe sighed, swimming forward to catch up with Andy, the strain barely audible in his voice.

              “He really doesn’t like it when vampires feed off of him, man,” Joe said, giving Andy a pointed look to the side. And of course, Andy felt like an idiot for not thinking about how terrifying it would be, but still… he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad.

              Much as he wanted to worry, to be guilty, there was something about Patrick’s blood that made him beyond rebuke. Of course, Andy had no intention of ever drinking Patrick’s blood without permission (again) but God, he wanted to. Even now he could still feel his body buzzing with the thrill of it, his every nerve ending singing and his mouth sucked dry of the taste of it, but still faintly smelling the same. It was no wonder he drank for too long. He hadn’t meant to go over, but they were already underfed, so a little blood did a lot of damage, more so than usual.

              If it was any consolation to the people around him, it had done a lot of good. Andy had been half-dead when they first surfaced after leaving the tank, and now he felt like he could carry both Pete and Patrick for miles and miles. Well, nearly. He was exhausted, but it was physically possible.

              “How long do you think we’ve been going?” he asked wearily.

              “A couple hours,” Joe said. He gave Andy a concerned look. “How long are you going to last?”

              “Couple hours,” Andy said. Pete started slipping over one side of his shoulder, and Andy readjusted him quickly.

              Joe made a face. Things had initially been scary with Pete, and in fact, they were still a little scary. They were able to make him come to again after he passed out for the second time, nearly drowning again, but he was very confused, and very weak. Joe said it was probably a concussion, but Andy wasn’t sure. It seemed like something was really wrong with him when he was awake, although Joe insisted all he could feel through the bond was undefined pain. At least they knew what was wrong with Patrick, even if mild hypovolemic shock was very bad untreated, they knew how to treat it. Andy guessed that a concussion while dehydrated was probably worse, but they’d need a doctor to know for sure.

              On top of everything else, Andy wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to explain this to a doctor. The thought actually made him laugh a little.

              “What’s the joke?” Joe asked.

              “We’ve still got no alibi,” Andy chuckled. “Talking our way out of this will be hard.” Joe laughed a little too.

              “It’s alright. We’ll have Pete do something different with his hair, then everyone will be too distracted to focus on it.”

              Andy laughed so hard he snorted up ocean water and shook Patrick awake, who grumbled a little as he repositioned himself on Andy. It only had the effect of making Andy laugh harder.

              “Oh, man,” Andy said. “Guess we never get a break, huh?”

              “No rest for the wicked and all that,” Joe agreed.

              They swam in relative silence for a while. Joe was an easy person to be friends with, not chattering endlessly when there was no need to. It made doing hard, physical work like this much easier with him than it would have been with anyone else. He unfortunately had a sixth sense, however, so Andy couldn’t pretend he was doing better than he was.

              “Do you need to take a break?” Joe asked. Andy pulled to a stop suddenly, splattering Joe with water as he turned to glare at him.

              “The faster we get there, the faster I can get this done with and get them off of my back. Taking a break will only prolong this,” he said stiffly.

              “You can’t keep going forever,” Joe argued.

              “I know that,” Andy snapped. “I have no plans on going forever, but I can go for long enough.”

              “Gimme Pete,” Joe said. Andy stared at him. Joe rolled his eyes and swam over, wrapping his arms around Pete and yanking him off. Pete made a pained noise, but obediently wrapped his arms around Joe’s neck in the same way he had Andy. It was immediately visible that one person was more of a strain for Joe than Andy, but he stuck his chin up.

              “You’ll switch back if you need to?” Andy asked after a long pause, too exhausted to argue.

              “Yeah, fine,” Joe agreed. “C’mon.”

              Swimming like this was much easier for Andy, though he had to keep slowing down for Joe to keep up with him. The sun had passed directly overhead and was now slowly sinking, and Andy was going a little bit insane with all of the ocean when Joe yelled.

              “Fuck, I see it!” he screamed.

              “See what?” Andy groaned.

              “Land, asshole! It’s actually there. Like, holy shit, that’s a shore!” Joe screamed. He punched the air, jostling Pete, but his passenger didn’t seem to care.

              Andy squinted. It was hard to see in the afternoon light, but he could see it too, if he focused very hard. It was there, just a mile or so in the distance, an indistinct blur of what had to be a rocky coast. He could have cried.

              “Home stretch,” he muttered, putting on a burst of speed he didn’t know he had in him, the end of the water tantalizing.

              It took what felt like hours, but by the looks of the sun was barely one hour of swimming before they were close enough for Andy to see the details of the shore. It was a beach, because the universe had apparently decided to be merciful for once, and there appeared to be a house on it.

              “Fuck me, is that land?” Patrick asked blearily.

              “Fuck yes it is,” Andy said, his voice reverent. “We’re going the fuck home, dude.”

              “Wouldn’t it just be the perfect end to the week we’re having if that turned out to be a wendigo’s house?” Patrick asked.

              But it wasn’t a wendigo’s house. Once Andy could place his feet on the ground of the gently sloping beach he shrugged Patrick off, letting him fall to his feet as well. Andy sprinted forward as best he could, discovering that he was pretty dizzy as well, and running in a straight line or running at all were impossible tasks. So he waded forward as steadily as he could until he could drag himself onto the beach, crawling up onto the pebbles on hands and knees until the water could no longer lap at his ankles, and then he collapsed.

              Andy would have been content to die there, his face lying in a pebble beach, rocks getting impressed in his cheek. The dry land, the warm sun, it wasn’t enough, certainly, not everything he needed, but it felt more amazing than he could have guessed.

              He heard the sounds of dragging through gravel three more times, identical to his, and then all three of them were laying on the beach, breathing heavily. Andy knew he had something else to do, but he couldn’t focus on it, overwhelmed with the idea that _they had made it_.

              “Oi! The fuck do you think you’re doing here?” Andy heard someone yell behind him. He had an Australian accent, which Andy found mildly comforting. At least they knew where they were.

              Andy dragged himself unwillingly up into a sitting position and stuck out one sand-covered hand to the blustering, middle aged man.

              “Pardon me, sir, but could you call an ambulance for my friends and I?” Andy asked mildly. The man looked taken aback as he took in the sight of the four of them properly.

              “What the hell happened to you?” he asked, eyeing the four of them suspiciously.

              “Bit of a long story, actually,” Andy said. “But we’re very dehydrated, very hungry, and my friends here are hurt. One of them suffered blood loss, one of them has a concussion, they’re all three exhausted, and we haven’t been home in weeks, so an ambulance? Can you call 911? Or is it 999 here? What’s the emergency number in Australia?” Andy asked.

              “Oh, fuck me, are you that band?” the man gaped. “The band that’s been all over the news? The missing one.”

              “Fall Out Boy?” Joe croaked. “That’s us.”

              The man swore again, then ran to his house, shouting that he would be right back. Andy let his head thunk back down onto the beach, the sun turning the backs of his eyelids red as he closed his eyes.

              “That could’ve gone better,” Joe said mildly.

              “Could’ve gone worse,” Andy argued.

              “Could’ve been a wendigo,” Patrick repeated sleepily.

              The man rushed back down the beach a few minutes later, his face full of apprehension, and a large pitcher of water in his hands.

              “You said you were dehydrated,” he explained, sounding almost embarrassed as he set the pitcher down. He was going to lay out glasses when Joe poured some of the water straight into his mouth, and the man grimaced.

              “I called a hospital,” he added to Andy. “They say you’ve got a friend in this city already? A Dan something?”

              “Korean Tom Cruise!” Joe crowed. The man stared in disbelief for a moment before shaking his head and jerking his thumb back to the house.

              “I’ll be in there, if you need me,” he said.

              “Told you they wouldn’t recognize me with my hair like this,” Pete said, voice muffled, and Andy laughed once again.

              When the paramedics arrived, Andy tried insisting that _he_ didn’t need to go to the hospital, it was just his friends who did, and that he was fine, but no one seemed to be listening. Due to his being only half-human, he was nervous that something really weird would show up on a basic vital sign, but if any part of Andy looked suspicious, no one said anything. He threw a small fit when he realized he was getting loaded into an ambulance alone, and wanted to know why they were being separated, what they were going to do with the others, and a few other choice questions that he later realized sounded a little unhinged.

              Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long after getting to the hospital for the doctors to tell Andy there was nothing wrong with him other than exhaustion and a lack of decent nutrition and water.

              “So you’re free to go, really,” the doctor said. “Can we get you anything?”

              “I want my glasses, my daughter, and a veggie burger. In that order. I also want my manager,” Andy added as an afterthought. The doctor made a face.

              “Well, I believe your manager is already here,” she said in a slow, soft touch of a voice. “How about you talk to him about it.”

              To Andy’s surprise, someone did bring him a veggie burger while he paced the too-small hospital room. He was still walking unsteadily, feeling like he was going to fall over at any moment, and he hoped that walking more might make the symptoms a little better.

              Andy was expecting Dan when the door flew open, but Joe was getting pushed in on a wheelchair, looking balefully up at Andy.

              “We have decompression sickness,” he said, his tone full of disgust.

              “Come again?” Andy asked.

              “Also known as the bends,” said the woman pushing his wheelchair. Andy looked up and, to his surprise, he saw Dr. Ferrum giving him a knowing smile. “Good seeing you again, Andy.”

              “You… are not Australian,” Andy said dully.

              “I called her. You need a doctor that you can tell the truth to,” KTC said, stepping into the room. He pulled Andy into a tight hug and said “Don’t ever do that again.”

              “Trust me, I didn’t want to do it the first time,” Andy promised. “Also, hold on, the bends? What is that?”

              “Decompression sickness,” Joe repeated. “Pete didn’t get a concussion, he just swam up too damn fast. We all did.”

              “And you’re all lucky you’re not dead,” Dr. Ferrum added. She walked back out and wheeled Patrick in, followed by Pete.

              “Are the wheelchairs necessary?” Patrick whined.

              “Hospital policy,” Dr. Ferrum said. “And you especially need to take it easy over the next forty-eight hours. You can die of this, you know. It’s no laughing matter.”

              “I think you’ll find I’m a medical miracle,” Patrick said with a wry smile.

              “I’m sure you are,” Dr. Ferrum sighed, turning her gaze skyward. “Humans that fight, they’re all so headstrong. At any rate, be careful, rehydrate slowly, and call me if you notice anything strange. Anything at all. But don’t hesitate to sleep, please,” she insisted, and took off with that.

              “Woman of few words, she is,” Joe said.

              “Well, Ferrum is the best of the best,” KTC said. “So, a mer-zoo?”

              “I can’t believe it either,” Patrick said sourly.

              “Have I missed anything else?” Andy asked.

              “Not much,” Pete said. He still looked pale and tired, but he was conscious and speaking again, which Andy counted as a win. “Oh, Panic called.”

              “Aren’t they in some cabin in the middle of the woods?” Andy asked.

              “That’s what I said!” Pete said. “But yeah, apparently Joe talked to Ryan in a dream-”

              “Still can’t believe that really happened,” Joe said.

              “-and they wanted to call and congratulate us on getting back alright. Brendon also personally wanna to pass along the joke that we were, and I quote, ‘washed up, get it?’”

              Andy groaned, but still felt a little better for hearing about the other guys. A little homier.

              The next few days were hectic, but easier to handle. They moved from the hospital into a hotel where all of their things were thankfully sent to them. They had a lot of publicity to catch up on, but whether due to incredible or horrible luck, hadn’t missed a single concert. They threw themselves immediately back into usual work, and with either magic or bribery from the label, only had to answer questions about their disappearance once.

              “We have no idea where we were that whole time,” Patrick said, his eyes wide and innocent. “If anyone has any idea, we would love to know, but we’re all just happy to be uninjured and back in working order.”

              “You really don’t remember anything about where you were?” the interviewer asked, clearly disbelieving.

              “No, not a thing. You don’t remember anything, do you Pete?”

              “Can’t bring myself to say I do,” Pete said, and the interviewer looked a little confused as to why they all burst into laughter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for reading, y'all! I don't have a lot to say here this time because, to be honest, it's been a rough month. I hope to be more on top of things next month, but for now I just wanna take the time to thank my absolutely fucking incredible beta. She has been nothing but supportive, I don't deserve her, she works with my crazy/shitty schedule and procrastinating habits, is a great friend, an awesome writer, and the only reason that you guys get an actual chapter rather than something that looks like my cat walked across the keyboard. You should check her out at https://archiveofourown.org/users/doc3 because she's amazing and I love her stuff.   
> Other than that, I hope to post a drabble or two along with the chapter next month, and hopefully I'll be cracking back down on the "big bad" plot. I guess that's all! Tell me what you think in the comments or in tumblr messages at thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com, and I'll see you later this month! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Chapter Title by Florence and the Machine


	7. Cherry Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something strange is going on around Salem. The boys decide to go check it out and try to stop whatever monster is causing it. But this time they're not the only ones there...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood (more than usual)

              Joe told himself, very firmly, that he was not going to scream. He didn’t end up listening to himself.

              “You want us to WHAT?” he yelled. Marie rolled over, giving him a puzzled, sleepy look. Joe pressed his fingers into his eyes until he saw red. He walked out of the room and shut the door, hands shaking.

              “Look, it’ll only take a day or so,” Pete said placatingly through the phone. Joe snarled.

              “We haven’t had time off in _months_. Not since fucking Christmas, unless you count that week and a half where we weren’t working but were trapped in a mer-zoo, which I don’t. So you want me to, in the _one_ week of vacation it looks like we’re going to be getting all goddamn year, spend more fucking time doing work with you?”

              “You sick of my face already?”

              “YES.”

              “I’m not happy about this either, but it’s important,” Pete said.

              “What could be so important?” Joe pleaded. He began plodding towards the kitchen, thinking that if he had to be awake, he could at least make himself useful and start on breakfast. “The world’s not ending, is it? And if it is, can’t we just send Panic! to take care of it?”

              “The world isn’t ending, per se,” Pete said. Hesitant. Joe could picture him anxiously twirling a phone cord, though he knew from the shitty quality of the call that he was calling from his cell phone. From a car, it sounded like.

              “Get on with it,” Joe said sourly, turning on the stove as he did.

              “There’s something stalking Massachusetts,” Pete said. Joe paused, frying pan in hand. He readjusted the phone between his head and shoulder.

              “Stalking? You sound like a movie poster.”

              “Well, it’s creepy,” Pete said defensively. “And it doesn’t really match anything I’ve heard of. Bodies are turning up… ravaged.”

              “Ravaged how?” Joe asked. A part of him was still pissed off, still wanted to be back in bed and tangled up in Marie, but he snapped into business mode fairly quickly.

              “Torn apart,” Pete said. “Like, you’d be lucky to find the skull in five pieces or less kind of torn apart.”

              “Lots of monsters do that,” Joe said, “That isn’t that weird.”

              “Not if it were just that, but the thing is all of the bodies are _there_ ,” Pete said.

              “You lost me,” Joe said after a moment.

              “They’re not getting eaten, Joe,” Pete said. “No blood drained like a vampire, no missing flesh like a werewolf or a wendigo, and I know you’re making a face because I said werewolf but there are rogue ones, okay? No skin ripped off, no bones missing, even the teeth are all still there!”

              “What kind of monster eats teeth?” Joe asked curiously.

              “You’re missing the point,” Pete said. “The bodies of over thirty people have been found like this, all torn apart and then, eurgh, rearranged.” Before Joe could ask, Pete explained, “Like, ugh, Dan sent me some of the crime scene photos, and the police think it’s devil worship or something because the parts are rearranged to look, like, sexual. You know, a couple gets killed and it’s set up so the guys dick is shoved in what’s left of her jaw-”

              “Yeah, I get the picture,” Joe said quickly. He shuddered. “Is it devil worship?”

              “No, it’s done with hands and teeth, no other tools,” Pete said. He paused for a moment. “We can’t just let that happen to people.”

              “Joe groaned. “No, we can’t. But do we have to do something about it?”

              “Patrick, Andy, and I are meeting up in Boston tonight then driving up to Salem. That’s where the center of it seems to be. Will you be there?”

              “Yes,” Joe said sourly. “Fine, I’ll see you tonight. I hate you.”

              “Thanks, man.”

              Joe grumbled to himself while he finished putting breakfast together. He didn’t want to go to Massachusetts. He didn’t even want to leave his bedroom, but Pete was right. He couldn’t very well just go on and let terrible things happen to people. Leaving the food in the kitchen, he went back to the bedroom, crawled under the covers, and pushed his face into Marie’s neck.

              “What’s up, baby?” she asked sleepily.

              “I think I’m gonna have to head out for a couple of days,” he said.

              Boston Logan Airport was every bit as confusing as Joe remembered from the few times he had been there previously. He hated some of the parts of being in a band. He’d been all over the world, but what he could most vividly remember in any given location was the airport layout. Usually, the layout was grid-like, straightforward, but unfortunately, Logan was set up about as badly as the rest of the city of Boston. Divided up into too many sections, it took nearly an hour of phone calls back and forth of “What gate are you at? No, in what section?” before the four of them managed to meet up. By then it was after dark, the city stretching out hazy and dusky around them as the air got crisp and cold.

              “Long time no see,” Patrick said to Joe, rolling his eyes.

              “Yeah, whatever,” Joe said. “Let’s go find some mangled corpses already.”

              As it turned out, there wasn’t a single taxi driver willing to take them to Salem. Whether it was too far away or because they were afraid of something there, Joe couldn’t tell, but he noticed that all of the drivers they asked looked nervous as they shook their heads and drove away. They were about to give up and just rent a car, even if it meant braving the Massachusetts Turnpike, when one of the drivers beckoned them in.

              Joe climbed into the front seat before anyone else could. He was in too foul a mood to put up with sitting squished in the back for an hour. The whole cab smelled like cigar smoke and rust, and a shiny black rosary hung from the rear view mirror. The driver, a dark skinned man whose teeth practically glowed in the darkness, smiled at him.

              “Anywhere special in Salem?” he asked, his voice rich and warm.

              “Near a hotel, I guess,” Joe said.

              “Easy customer,” the man said with another flash of shiny teeth, then he swung the taxi into the middle lane, accelerating too fast and weaving through the other cars with ease. The interior of the car was very dark, but the city was glowing, and it wasn’t hard to see the smug expression on the cab driver’s face.

              “So, witch city,” he said, “What’s there for four boys such as yourselves?”

              “We just want to look around,” Pete said.

              “Sightseeing,” Patrick agreed flatly.

              “Beautiful city, beautiful city,” the driver said. He jerked the taxi to the right to merge into a new lane, driving Joe’s head into the window with a smack.

              Joe rubbed at the back of his head while the driver chattered on.

              “A beautiful city! Historic! Home of all those horrible witch trials, yes, but how they’ve embraced their past!” he cried, gesticulating wildly with his hands all the while. “Not that their citizens are crazy devil worshippers, not exactly, but there is a very deep pagan culture there.” Joe wished he would just leave his hands on the steering while, as the car wavered on the edge of their lane and the next.

              “Pagan?” Pete asked, leaning forward a little. “Are there lots of witches there, then?”

              “Of course!” the driver laughed. He let his elbow rest on the steering wheel, revved the gas. They were flying down the highway, and though Joe couldn’t see the speedometer, he was certain that they were over the speed limit. “But most of them aren’t real witches, see.”

              “Some of them are?” Pete asked.

              “Eh, not my place to say,” the driver said, “But I can tell you that some of the stuff they do is a little unnatural. Maybe it is magic, maybe it isn’t.”

              “Do they do anything ritualistic?” Pete asked. “Do they perform sacrifices at all?”

              “Hey, I can’t say I know,” the driver laughed. “Why, you got an eye on that sort of thing?”

              “Well, you know, I’ve heard things about Salem,” Pete said, his tongue twisting, unable to lie his way out of it.

              “My friend sacrifices farm animals to Satan frequently, and he’s looking for some more friends like that,” Andy said, and the cab driver laughed a little, flashing his teeth again.

              “You boys may want to be careful in Salem, however,” he said. “There are rumours about the city.”

              “What kind of rumours?” Pete asked, leaning so far forward he was practically in the front seat.

              “Seatbelt,” Patrick snapped, and Pete rolled his eyes, leaning back and buckling his seatbelt with a martyred look on his face.

              “I don’t mean to frighten you, but a lot of mysterious deaths have happened in Salem,” the cab driver said, his tone low but still loud enough to hear over the roar of the engine. “Ripped apart like by some kind of animal. And they’ve got woods out by Marblehead, sure, but nothing big enough for predators to live in.

              “And you know, whatever did this is a predator. The bodies they find are just bloody jigsaw puzzles. Sick and mangled and not a drop of blood missing. Even the scavengers won’t touch the bodies, so they’re all perfectly preserved for the police. You’d think there’d be an uproar about it, right?” he paused, and Joe nodded faintly. The man laughed.

“Nope. News won’t talk about it. Nobody knows what to think, except not to go out at night.” He smiled at Joe, his lips pulling up just high enough to reveal a pair of sharp, white fangs. “Bad things come out at night.”

              It took Joe a beat after seeing the fangs to realize something was wrong. A beat too long.

              “Pull over,” Joe demanded. The vampire grinned at him, fangs flashing, dripping with venom.

              “We haven’t reached our destination yet,” he said, flicking a button under the steering wheel. Four locks clicked shut, and the car sped up again.

              “You picked the wrong guys, buddy,” Joe said. Summoning all his strength, he threw his weight to one side, slamming the passenger side door open. His hands fumbled with his seatbelt for a moment too long, and when he looked up the car was careening off the side of the highway, and it hit a tree head on almost instantly, sending Joe flying back, his neck cracking painfully as he was flung out of the open door.

              The car was smoldering when Joe pulled himself to his feet, vision blurry and ears ringing. He waited a moment for the vampire to get out and fight him, wondered why it took so long, and then it hit him. He had three perfectly good victims already trapped inside.

              “Dammit!” Joe swore, sprinting back towards the taxi, tripping over his own feet. His vision was still spinning, and it took three pulls on the door handle before he realized it was probably still locked, and he smashed the glass with his fist, reaching inside to grab whoever he could and drag them out.

              He could hear the sounds of a fight coming from inside, but he could see only fast and blurry movement, unable to focus on more detail than that. Frustrated, he grabbed the inside of the door and pulled with until he felt the door rip away from the car and the four of them tumbled out, the vampire with his hands clenched around Pete’s throat and choking off his air.

              “I only need two of you bastards, so whoever wants to stop fighting first will get the easiest death,” he snarled, his face contorted in maniacal glee.

              “Good luck with that,” Joe yelled, and kicked the vampire in the ribs as hard as he could, knocking him off of Pete.

              “Fucker,” Patrick growled. He grabbed a broken branch off the ground, and, before the vampire could regain his footing, stabbed him through the chest with it. The vampire easily dissolved, and the four of them stood still, heaving. Andy lay on the ground, a nasty cut on his forehead, but he groaned, and Joe could feel him- alive but in pain- through the bond.

              “You okay?” Patrick asked. Patrick’s hair and clothes were messed up and there was an angry red mark on his arm that looked like the makings of a nasty bruise, but he seemed fine otherwise, which was comforting.

              “I’m fine,” Joe said. “My head hurts like hell, but I’m fine. Andy?”

              “Yeah, me too,” Andy said. He had a gash on his forehead, but he stood up without stumbling, which was more than Joe could say.

              “Pete?” Joe asked. Might as well do inventory while they were all standing still.

              “Fine,” Pete said. He sounded hoarse and shaken, but he couldn’t lie, so Joe let it slide.

              “Fantastic,” Joe said bracingly. A car whizzed by on the dark road without noticing them. “Now, where the fuck are we?”

              “We passed a ‘Welcome to Salem’ sign just before things went south,” Andy said, then growled. “God, I thought I could smell vampire but it was too smoky for me to tell! I’m an idiot.”

              “I should’ve known too,” Joe said, disgruntled, then turned to Patrick, “Thanks for staking the bastard.”

              “My pleasure,” Patrick said.

               Joe looked down the long and winding road up to where it disappeared in darkness in a copse of trees on either side. It didn’t seem very well travelled, and certainly not well travelled by taxis. He heaved a sigh.

               “We’re gonna have to walk,” he said, glancing back at the ruined and smoking taxi. “Hopefully it’s not too far to the center of town.”

               “At least it’s not cold out,” Andy said.

               “Not cold for you,” Patrick muttered.

               The four of them started to climb up to the side of the road when Joe paused. He bit his lip, then jogged back to the car and climbed into the tilted, smoking vehicle, and snatched the rosary off of the rearview mirror. He held up the necklace and turned it over in his hands.

               The rosary was made of polished black stones that were shockingly lightweight. The crucifix at the bottom looked to be made of the same material, nearly reflective even in the dimness of the wrecked car. Joe held the crucifix closer to his face to see if he could make out any remarkable features, and he nearly dropped it as he got a decent look. The crucifix looked like any other that Joe had seen, save for the fact that the figure on the cross was a skelton.

               Joe clenched his fist around the rosary and shoved it deep in his pocket, then crawled back out of the car.

              “What’s all that about?” Pete called back to him.

              “Souvenir,” Joe said lightly. He looked down the dark road with a frown. Patrick shivered, and Pete instantly slung an arm around him.

              “Let’s get going,” Joe said.

              The four of them trudged down the road by the ocean, wind from the waves blowing the overpowering stench of low tide in their faces. The dark path was eerie, and the skeletal trees and ocean breeze made it feel more like October than April.

              They followed the road they were on as it passed a small university campus, filled with the raucous sounds of students up late and drinking, and into a street that seemed to be made up of nothing but shops that were closed for the evening.

              Nearly an hour after the crash, they seemed to reach the heart of downtown Salem. There were three Dunkin Donuts in sight, and a few restaurants and bars that were still open and doing business. Nothing else looked like it was a chain, no familiar Hiltons rising up in the old cobblestone streets. Pete eventually jerked his thumb at a bar, and Joe assented, stepping into the blue light of what looked to be a sports bar. It was noisy and warm, and Joe could feel Pete and Patrick’s relief, so he resigned himself and sat down.

              “Table for four?” the waitress asked, and Joe nodded wearily. Mercifully, she seated them in a corner by a window, far away from the blasting televisions, and Joe leaned back in his chair.

              They ordered food immediately, barely glancing at the menu, and the waitress looked pleasantly surprised.

              “Anything else I can get you?” she asked. She had a thick Boston accent, and Joe was finding it difficult to take her seriously.

              “Yeah, actually, are there any hotels near here?” Pete asked.

              “Um, there’s a couple a bed and breakfasts around here,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She was eyeing Pete, sizing him up, and Joe couldn’t tell if it was because she recognized him or if she was interested. Probably both. “And then there’s the Hawthorne hotel down by the park, if you’re feeling a little adventurous.”

              “Adventurous how?” Joe asked.

              “Oh, everybody says it’s haunted, but everybody says everything in Salem’s haunted,” the waitress laughed. “It’s a little pricey, but I hear it’s nice.”

              “Is it close?” Patrick asked, and she nodded again.

              “Very. I can give you directions if you like?”

              After much enthusing, she went back to give the kitchen their orders and to write down directions. They sipped at soda, and Joe couldn’t say for sure what the others felt, but he was still shaken.

              “So what do you say that once we check in we stay in for the night?” Joe suggested.

              “Good idea,” Patrick said, sounding relieved.

              “Well,” Pete said, and they all groaned.

              “It does damage at night!” Pete cried, and Joe gave him a disparaging look.

              “We can look tomorrow night,” he insisted. Pete frowned, and Joe rolled his eyes.

              “One night,” he said, and Pete leaned back in his chair looking defeated. Joe focused on the food that was coming out, devouring it in minutes. No one seemed in the mood for conversation while they were all finally eating, and for a while they just ate in silence, the ambient noise of a dozen games at once blaring in the background. Joe glanced out the window, watching the college students and late night bar goers walk up and down the street in clumps, when he saw a very strange group of girls.

              There were five of them, and they all looked simultaneously similar and very different at the same time. Though they didn’t appear to have much in common, different races and facial features among all of them. But the five of them were all wearing black dresses with knee length skirts, high heels, wide brimmed black hats, and blood red lipstick.

              “Who the hell are they?” Joe asked. The others looked out the window and made similarly shocked looking faces.

              “Could be a gang,” Pete said after a minute. He looked rather dazed, which was fair, as all of them were unbelievably beautiful.

              “I feel like heels are an impractical shoe choice for a gang,” Andy said. Even he was staring. One of the girls, with paperwhite skin and long black hair pulled back into a braid looked over at them in the restaurant, and glared right at Joe. Joe cringed away from her unthinkingly. Another girl, very tan and curvier under her dress than the others, winked at him, her tongue stuck out just a bit.

              “Those are… not normal girls,” Patrick said.

              “I think you’re drooling,” Pete said.

              “Oh- like you aren’t,” Patrick snapped, blushing slightly. Joe shook his head and turned back to the group of them, transfixed. He couldn’t hear them talking through the thick glass window, even with heightened senses, but the black haired girl looked like their leader, her head held high as she gave what had to be instructions to the other four. The skirts were quite short, Joe noticed, then instantly felt guilty for noticing. But they all did have long legs as well.

              “They’re...something,” Andy said.

              “Definitely something,” Joe agreed. A girl with unnaturally red hair glanced over at them and made a shooing motion with her hand, a worried look in her eyes. Joe shrugged, and she turned back to the others, said something, and the group of them walked away.

              “Wow,” Pete said. As Joe turned back to the tabled, he could see a dazed look in the others’ eyes. “I mean…”

              “Wow, yeah,” Patrick said.

              “Probably weird college kids,” Joe said bracingly.

              After they finished dinner, they followed the waitress’s instructions down another ancient road made of huge stones, past kitschy stores with herbs and stones and wands in the front windows. They came across the large, old-looking hotel and managed to wake up the night clerk for long enough to check into two adjacent rooms.

They said goodnights quickly and laid down. Without even changing, Joe climbed under the ancient cover and fell asleep almost instantly.

              It felt like he had barely closed his eyes when he woke to the sounds of screaming. It was muffled almost instantly, but he sprung to the window to see if he could see anything at street level. Sure enough, splayed out on the pavement was a mangled corpse, and right above it stood the five girls from outside the bar.

              Joe’s heart leapt into his throat as he looked down at them. He glanced at the prone figure of Pete sleeping, briefly considered not waking him for time’s sake, but then decided that leaving him without protection would cause more trouble.

              Joe shook Pete awake roughly, hovering right over his face and whispering that they had to go downstairs immediately. To his immense relief, Pete didn’t question this, but instead stood up, throwing on a hotel bathrobe and running after him.

              They ran downstairs, past the sleeping front desk clerk and out onto the street that was, very suddenly, empty.

              “What’s wrong?” Pete demanded in a hoarse whisper.

              “The girls, the hot ones from earlier, they were right here with a body!” Joe hissed back, spinning around. He couldn’t even see blood on the sidewalk. He looked frantically around him and saw a glimpse of movement in the park across the street and took off running, leaving Pete in the dust almost immediately.

              He sprinted across the dead street and into the dark park, skidding to a halt behind a tree twenty or so yards away from a white gazebo, the only part of the park that was light up, and where the five of them were standing, holding the corpse between them.

              “...he will be missed,” said one of the girls, which one it was Joe couldn’t tell for sure, but she had a whispery voice, like paper rustling.

              “He will be missed,” they all repeated in unison, their voices clear and bell-like. Joe peeked out from behind the tree, hearing the soft tearing sound of teeth breaking through skin just before he saw them, all drinking deeply from the corpse.

              Pete skidded to a halt next to Joe, and Joe clamped a hand over his mouth before he could say anything. Not that it mattered. There was no way that they hadn’t already been heard. Vampires, five vampires, oh, the two of them were beyond dead.

              After a minute or two of slurping sounds, Joe and Pete frozen completely, the girl with the whispery voice, the black haired, pale faced girl from early, spoke a little louder.

              “Go home with a warning, boys,” she suggested. Joe flattened his back against the tree trunk, but they could still be heard. She could probably hear their heartbeats from this distance. “Go home and don’t meddle in affairs that are clearly beyond you.”

              Leaving barely a wind behind them, the girls disappeared. Joe chanced one quick look out from behind the tree, and saw nothing left behind in the pristine, white gazebo. He glanced at Pete, who was looking up at him in wide eyed terror, his face pale and covered in sweat. Wordlessly, Joe nodded at him and they sprinted back to the hotel, not stopping until they were back inside their room.

              Joe didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Neither of them said a word, but instead sat on their beds, Joe occasionally throwing glances at either the window or the door, his heart still pounding. Even with Andy, what good were they against five vampires? If the girls changed their mind, if they came back to finish the job… Joe felt like screaming, but instead he waited, impatient, until the sun came up, and then fell into uneasy sleep once the sun was good and light above the horizon.

              When he woke up again, Andy and Patrick had entered the room, and a still pale and shaken Pete was rattling off the previous night’s events at top speed.

              “...they’re vampires, all of them, and I mean, that’s gotta be it, right?”

              Joe sat up, running his hands through his hair once as he glanced over at Patrick and Andy, who looked, of all things, skeptical.

              “What!?” Pete demanded.

              “Well,” Andy began tentatively.

              “Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?” Patrick asked. “I mean, it was late, we were all exhausted-”

              “The leader of their group turned to face us and told us to get out while we still could,” Joe said. The two of them looked over at him, and he swung his legs out of the bed, stood up and crossed his arms over his chest.

              “That sounds… pretty bad, but it doesn’t fit,” Andy said.

              “Doesn’t fit what?” Joe snapped.

              “You think these girls are doing all the killings?” Andy asked.

              “Obviously,” Pete said.

              “How could they?” Andy asked, sounding exasperated. “All of the bodies were found complete- well, not intact, but were found complete! We already ruled out vampires yesterday because no blood had been taken, remember? But you said you saw them drinking his blood and not tearing the body to shreds. So they have to be something else.”

              “So, what, now we have two impossible things to take down in Massachusetts?” Joe asked.

              “Who said anything about taking down the vampires?” Andy asked. “They were just feeding.”

              “They killed someone!”

              “People kill animals for food every day!”

              Joe and Andy glared at each other for a moment, and then Patrick cleared his throat.

              “How about we start by trying to look for the other thing and deal with the vampire girls if it becomes a problem?” he suggested.

              Joe was still glowering, but he said “Fine,” and walked over to the window. It looked around midday, and the window felt icy to the touch. Another chilly day.

              “Well, we don’t have much of a place to start during the day,” Pete said. “Or at night. Unless we’re taking the bait route again.”

              “I am not being the bait,” Patrick said. “I’ve had enough of being bait for a dozen lifetimes. How about instead we do literally anything else?”

              “We could get familiar with the town?” Joe suggested. It was a weak idea, but as they had nothing better to go on, the band set out, walking around the ancient, picturesque streets of Salem.

              In truth, a day was all it really took to see Salem. Since none of them felt so inclined to get museum tickets, they wandered around the stores, a few comic book shops that Andy stopped in, but most of them New Age magic stores with names like Omen and Hex. The one they looked around in first, Omen, was much brighter lit than Joe had expected, and aside from a tarot reading station and some herbs and stones at the front, it was just a bookstore with a pleasant girl that wished them “Blessed Be” behind the counter and  something labeled “community altar” that made sounds like the faint tinkling of wind chimes and gurgling of water.

              Pete looked at the selection of books, thumbing over the spines and occasionally pulling one out to read the back. Patrick hovered near the counter, and Joe began running his fingers idly through the baskets of gemstones sitting on display. While Pete asked an employee a question, Joe touched stones called smooth jasper and jagged pyrite,  lifting each rock in turn until one of them turned out to be a surprisingly lightweight, shiny, black stone that felt eerily familiar.

              “Have you felt an affinity?” a voice behind Joe asked. He spun around, the black stone still clutched in his hand.

              “A what?” Joe asked. The woman smiled at him from behind a wild tangle of gray curls.

              “An affinity, my dear. Does this gem call to you?”

              Joe didn’t answer, but she stepped closer and gently pulled his fingers back until she could see the stone.

              “Ah, jet,” she said. “A very curious stone, jet is.”

              “Curious?” Joe asked. “What, because it’s so lightweight?”

              “Yes, partly,” she agreed. “Jet is often called black amber, you see, because like amber, it comes from trees. It’s fossilized driftwood, very similar to coal in composition, and it’s so light and soft because it’s organic. But metaphysically, jet is a stone of very powerful psychic protection.”

              She spoke so earnestly that Joe resisted the powerful urge to roll his eyes, but she must have suspected that he wanted to, for she gave him a small, condescending smile.

              “You may not believe, but it’s quite true. Jet has powerful protective properties, as well as aural cleansing. Those drawn to it are usually in danger, needing some sort of protection or cloaking.” She peered up at Joe with piercing eyes. “What has you frightened?”

              “Nothing in particular,” Joe said peeved. “How much for this?”

              “I’ll ring you up at the counter,” she said, a knowing look in her eyes.

              “What was up with that?” Pete asked as they left, and Joe shrugged.

              “The rosary that the vampire taxi driver had was made of the same stuff,” he said. “And I wanted to get her off my back.”

              It wasn’t exactly a lie, and it was enough to get Pete off his back, so they went on, browsing the streets with a few other off-season tourists until the sun started to sink in the sky.

              “We need a real plan,” Patrick said, somewhat needlessly. The sun was crimson and very low on the horizon, and Joe was trying to come up with something other than “hope for the best,” which was his usual plan.

              “Alright, maybe we should just try and stake this out,” Joe said. “Think, where do monsters like this usually stalk?” The other three replied at the same time:

              “Alleys.”

              “Forests.”

              “Cemeteries.”

              Joe glared at the three of them.

              “None of you are helping,” he snapped. “They struck by the park last night, so where tonight?”

              “Someplace isolated, probably,” Patrick said. “You almost caught whoever it was last night,and they won't want to make the same mistake twice.”

              “So a park or a forest preserve or something nearby?” Joe guessed.

              “Maybe,” Patrick agreed.

              “You ever been to Forest River Park?” the overly helpful woman at the neighboring table asked. Joe turned to her, eyebrows raised.

              “Forest River?” he asked.

              “Yeah, it’s this super pretty park out by the university,” she said, and her partner scoffed.

              “The forests are all down south, they aren’t looking for that,” he said.

              “Forests?” Joe asked.

              “The Salem forest preserve is down by the university’s south campus,” he said. “That’s where you’ll find all the best hiking.”

              “And we’re such avid hikers,” Patrick muttered, and Joe elbowed him.

              “Thanks so much,” Pete said with a dazzling, blinding white smile.

              “So,” said Andy in an undertone, “City park or forest preserve?”

              “Well my gut’s telling me not to go to a forest preserve in the middle of the night, so that’s probably where we ought to go,” Patrick said, disgruntled.

              “Solid point,” Joe said. “Which way to the forest preserve?”

              There were just a few rays of faded orange light in the sky left when the overpriced taxi dropped them at the trailhead. The woods were unlike the monstrous skyscrapers of trees Joe had grown used to. They were instead filled with sparse, yellow brown trees and smelled more like salt than forest. According to the plaque standing just a few feet down the trail, they were in one of the Atlantic coast’s saltwater marshes.

              The trail in the dirt faded into small wooden walkways across the marsh, then back into dirt paths through the trees as it wound deeper and deeper into the woods. Soon they were far enough away that they could no longer hear the hum of cars coming from the road they had travelled on, and instead could hear only the caws of nocturnal birds.

              Joe led the way through the dark, sparse forest, walking in a slow but thorough hunter’s prowl so as not to miss hearing or seeing anything. Unfortunately, the stick snapping behind him told him that Pete and Patrick were probably not on the same page.

              Joe was about to tell them to shut up and wait there while he and Andy went ahead when they heard a scream rise up from the right of them. The four of them stopped and froze for a second, looked at each other, and then began running off in that direction, splashing through the icy cold water.

              Even as they ran through the water they could hear more and more screams, and Joe felt a wave of fear. There were many voices, too many, and it sounded like a massacre from the number. Anything that was causing that much damage wasn’t something they could stop on their own.

              After stumbling across the pool of water, they hit the bottom of a steep hill. The screams were coming from the top of it, as well as a flickering light that looked like it was coming from a fire. Then, before they could start running up the hill, Joe heard a shriek of what was unmistakably laughter, and he held out his arms for them to pause.

              “They’re not dying,” Joe said, exasperated. “This is a party.”

              Sure enough, once they found a tiny path to walk up to the top of the hill, there was the beginnings of a large, crackling bonfire, and a group of ten or so college students were laughing as the flames rose quickly.

              “Cool, we walked into a kegger,” Patrick said. “Maybe we can still make something of this night.”

              “Head in the game,” Pete snapped.

              “I don’t think we have to worry about any monsters attacking here,” Patrick said. “There’s too many of them.”

              “Should we go somewhere else?” Andy asked.

              Joe’s attention wandered away from the three of them bickering in the shadows, and turned his attention to the college kids, all of them laughing, tossing cans into the fire, and all of them with a drink in hand. All of them, Joe noted, but a pretty golden-skinned girl with curly hair that stood near the back of the crowd, wearing all black clothes and sporting shiny, blood red lipstick.

              “ _Vampire_ ,” Joe hissed, smacking whoever was nearest him in the chest. All three of the shut up and drew to attention, staring out at the girl across the fire, where she too was surveying the party.

              “You think she’s looking for a victim?” Patrick whispered, his voice barely a breath.

              “Could be,” Joe said.

              Even as they were whispering, something caught the girl’s eyes, and her head turned off into the woods. Escaping the notice of anyone else at the party, she slipped off into the treeline, and Joe beckoned his band, running around the party so as not to attract extra attention. Skirting the clearing meant a lot more crashing through underbrush, but the party was loud enough that he believed it would be easy enough to escape unwanted attention as they ran.

              On the other side of the hill, in one spotty patch of moonlight, a very human boy was pissing in a bush, and the vampire was walking up to him, fists clenched and fangs bared. Without hesitation, Joe transformed and pounced on her, knocking her to the ground.

              His claws dug into her shoulder and she hissed in anger, spraying him with venom and sending him flying backwards off of her into a tree that shuddered down to its roots as Joe hit it, crumpling to the forest floor.

              “Stupid mutt!” she screamed, and then, to Joe’s immense and bleary eyed surprise, she spun around and jammed a wooden stake deep into the chest of the student, who had bared fangs and was about to lunge at Patrick. The vampire, dressed in a hot topic t-shirt and skinny jeans like all the other students at the party, let out a horrible wail as he dissolved into dust.

              Still reeling, Joe transformed back into a human, snatching up his clothes quickly, suddenly self-conscious in the presence of the heaving, bright-eyed gaze of the vampire girl.

              “Dumb dog!” she growled as she stood up straight, her lips moving from a snarl into a pout. She held the hem of her shirt in her hands and her pout deepened. “You put a hole in my shirt. And winter’s over! Do you have any idea how few stores are open after dark in the summer? Shopping isn’t easy for a vampire!”

              “I’m sorry,” Joe said, almost reflexively, he was so shocked by the abrupt turn the conversation took.

              “You should be!” she yelled. “The four of you, thundering around all over the place like idiots, it’s a wonder they haven’t gotten you yet. What are you doing here anyway?”

              “We’re monster hunters,” Joe said. No one else in his band seemed recovered enough to speak.

              “Not good ones,” the girl scoffed, then she sighed. “I’m Carson, and you’re gonna need to come with me. We have to talk to the rest of the Salem Bitches about this.”

***

              “Wait, what about the people at the party?” Patrick asked, even if they were walking briskly back downhill towards where the trail began. The water they had splashed through now made his jeans cold and clingy and he was trying not to visibly shiver.

              “What about them?” Carson asked flippantly. She was stomping ahead of the rest of them, walking through tangles of branches as though there was nothing there at all and leaving deep and tiny divots in the earth where her heels landed.

              “Won’t they have noticed that one of them just got murdered?” Patrick pressed. He was grateful, of course, that she had killed the vampire before it could rip his throat out, but it all felt so sudden.

              “Doubt it,” Carson said. She began to slosh through the marsh, but before Patrick could even moan, she seemed to think better of it, and jumped back onto the trail, even slowing her pace slightly. “They were drunk and loud. It was dark out. I’m not wigged over it, are you?”

              “Who are the Salem…?” Andy trailed off, looking almost embarrassed. Carson tittered a little.

              “Salem Bitches, but don’t tell Prudence I called us that. She flips when we spread it around, doesn’t even like us calling ourselves that.” She whacked a few branches out of the way, paused, pulled out her phone and texted someone rapidly, then continued, “We’re, ah. Hmm. We’re a lesbian vampire girl gang. Well, mostly gay. I’m not. And we’re also vigilantes. We protect the innocent, fight the bad guys, save the world.” She tossed a grin back at them. “You know, typical girly things.”

              “Of course,” Pete said faintly. “Girly things.”

              They continued through the darkness, and Patrick couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him the whole time, but he followed the back of Andy’s pale neck and the sounds of footfalls as the trail thinned out under the trees, blocking out the moonlight.

              “There’s five of us right now, but the numbers are always in flux,” Carson said. “Right now it’s me, Maria, Jess, Carolyn, and Prudence, but Jess is still pretty new. She’s only a year, but she’s pretty good. Course, they all think I just talk her up cause I’m grateful to not be the baby anymore, but I like her. She’s super rad.

              “Actually, Jess is the one that’s picking us up tonight. I messaged her because, well, you guys look kinda cold,” she said, turning back briefly and giving Patrick a surprisingly warm look. “She’ll probably be waiting for us. She’s a fast driver.”

              They poured out of the end of the trail and sure enough, there was a short scarlet car idling in the parking lot. With the help of the streetlights, Patrick could just faintly make out the pretty girl with unnaturally red hair sitting behind the wheel, wrapped up in a black leather jacket and scowling out at them.

              “Ignore her,” Carson said in a low voice. “She’s just nervous about how Prudence will react. She thinks she’s gonna get in trouble for bringing you guys in.”

              “Is she?” Patrick asked.

              “Maybe,” Carson said. “Doubt it. I’ll tell Prudence I grabbed you. Anyway, Prudence is always mad at us, so I can’t see how it matters much.”

              Carson stopped and surveyed them, biting her lip and cocking her head.

              “I don’t think you’ll be in any danger,” she said slowly. “I mean, Prudence doesn’t like men, but I think this is a special circumstance. She’ll understand.”

              Carson ran forward to the car, moving at the blinding vampire speed that still made Patrick feel off-balance just watching. He shuddered just slightly, but kept walking forward while Carson leaned forward into the open car window, standing on one foot and twirling her hair as though she were flirting rather than discussing tactics. Patrick caught himself staring at her ass for a second, then looked away quickly, embarrassed. He didn’t like vampires, or he didn’t want to, anyway, but these weren’t normal girls.

              _The hunter and the bait_ , he thought darkly to himself, and looked back at the car, making a conscious effort to not check either of them out.

              “Come here often, boys?” Jess asked, one eyebrow quirked. Her brown eyes looked almost luminous against her pale, angular face, and though she still looked tense, she also looked amused. Amused, Patrick realized, because they were all having difficulty talking. He swallowed hard and spoke up first.

              “Just tourists,” he said drily, throwing open the passenger door and falling into the leather seat. In the reflection in the windshield, he could see the other three squeezing into the backseat, and Carson waved at them from the window.

              “I’m gonna run ahead and explain it to Prudence,” she said. “See you in a few!”

              “Bye!” Jess said, waving out the window, and Carson breezed away, a black and brown blur that disappeared into the night. Jess turned to the boys, and sighed.

              “So who the hell are you guys?” she asked.

              “We’re monster hunters,” Andy said faintly.

              “We’re also a rock band,” Pete added.

              “Really?” Jess said, looking mildly interested. Her eyes were surrounded in coal black eyeliner, unlike Carson’s, and Patrick wished he didn’t notice quite so much. “Well, if you’ve got girlfriends, don’t let Maria know that.” She revved the engine once then swung out of the parking lot, speeding through the darkened streets at least twice as fast as what could be legal.

              “Why not?” Andy asked.

              “I’m not quite sure how to put it delicately,” Jess said. “Ask her if you’re curious.”

              The engine of the car was roaring beneath them as they wound around tight corners. Patrick’s fingers gripped at the edges of the seat even though he had his seatbelt on. She slammed on the brakes at a red light so suddenly that Patrick lurched forward, nearly running headlong into the windshield.

              “That’s weirdly ominous,” Pete said with a nervous laugh. “Seriously, what does that mean?”

              “Nothing sinister,” Jess said, the faintest hint of a smile playing at the corner of her blood red lips. “She just… ugh, she calls herself a super groupie,” she said with a shrug. “She’s got a lot of notches in her belt, and all of them are famous musicians.”

              She took off again the second the light turned green, weaving into the wrong lane so as to pass one lone car in front of her and sending Patrick violently from one side to another. He realized, distantly, that he was holding his breath as she drove.

              “We don’t sleep with groupies,” Andy said, affronted.

              “Hey, I don’t sleep with dudes at all, so that’s between you guys and her,” she said, shaking her head. “What band, anyway?”

              “Fall Out Boy,” Pete said, and to Patrick’s immense surprise, Jess lit up with a grin.

              “The Sugar guys, right? Aw, man, my best friend had tickets to a show of yours! We were gonna go together,” she said, a wistful look in her eyes.

              “Why didn’t you?” Joe asked.

              “Well, I got murdered, didn’t I?” she said with a humorless laugh, and she sped right up to a parking garage, grabbing a ticket out of the machine and sliding into a parking spot right by the entrance.

              Patrick felt nauseous when he stepped out of the car, but Jess looked like she was in a better mood than she had been when she first picked them up.

              “Lucky we’ve got parking so close,” she said as she led them out of the garage. “Course, I’m the only one with a car, but it sure made things simpler tonight, huh?”

              She led them out of a different exit, right into the middle of one of the cobblestone streets that couldn’t be driven on, surrounded on all sides by shops that had closed hours ago. The street was noiseless but for the burbling fountain in the center of the square and their footsteps on the stones.

              “How close?” Pete asked. “I didn’t think this was a residential district.”

              “It’s not,” Jess said. She walked right up to the large square fountain, sunken into the middle of the center, and stepped into it, beckoning them forward. “Come on! It might be cold for humans, but you want to get it over with as fast as possible.”

              Patrick shivered in the night air. He wanted nothing more than to stay outside, or perhaps to go back into their hotel, but Joe stepped forward after her into the fountain.

              It was just as icy as Patrick had feared, wading into it, but he gritted his teeth to prevent them from chattering as Jess walked up to a large stone archway in the middle. She put a hand on the bricks and held it there for a moment, then beckoned them forward again as she walked through the stone arch and disappeared.

              “Anyone else getting some horrible ‘led into an alternate dimension to be feasted upon and tortured forever’ vibes from this, or is it just me?” Andy asked.

              “I’d rather not get hunted down by these girls,” Joe said, shaking his head, and he too stepped through the arch and disappeared.

              “Great, we can’t just leave him in the hell dimension,” Pete said, and followed, winking out of the night.

              “This is a terrible idea,” Patrick said.

              “Yes,” Andy agreed. “But we can’t leave them alone there. They’ll get eaten alive.”

              “Does that make me the bottle of wine to wash it down with?” Patrick asked sullenly. “Fine. If we don’t make it out, I’m blaming you,” he said, and held his breath before stepping through the arch.

              It felt like a wave of static electricity had passed over him, and then he was standing not in the cold night air, but in what looked like the drawing room of a very old mansion, lit with an immense fire and candle sconces on every wall. He was dripping fountain water onto an ancient looking red and gold carpet, and in front of him, a very stern looking girl was sitting in an armchair and glaring at him.

              “One more, you said?” she asked in a cold, whispery voice.

              “Yes, Prudence,” Carson said, and Patrick stepped out of the way in time for Andy to walk into the room as well.

              Prudence was still beautiful, he supposed, but she seemed harsher than any of the other vampires. Her hair was black as oil against preternaturally white skin, and unlike the others, she kept her fangs clearly on display over her lower lip without even having her mouth open. And the way she stared at Patrick made him feel not like prey, but like something less than, somehow. The entire image was made all the more disconcerting by the fact that she could not have been older than sixteen physically, Patrick was sure of it.

              “So,” Prudence said, standing up and walking over to the band, looking them up and down. “Monster fighters, you say?” She frowned, looking them over again. “None of you are human, that’s a nice change of pace.”

              “I’m human,” Patrick said, and she looked back at him, her eyebrows pinched together.

              “Can’t be,” she said. “Wrong blood. I can smell it.”

              “Then what am I?” Patrick asked. Prudence leaned in, then, uncomfortably close, her face right up against his neck, and she inhaled deeply just as his pulse spiked with fear. She pulled away and frowned a little deeper.

              “Curious,” she said.

              “What?” Patrick asked defensively.

              “My apologies,” Prudence said. “I thought you were fae. You smelled fae, but there’s no poison in you.” She gave him a funny smile, looking like she didn’t smile very often. “It’s a wonder you haven’t been drained yet.”

              “Night’s not over yet,” a low, drawling voice came from behind the back of a couch, and Patrick tensed up at the same time as Joe and Andy stepped protectively in front of him.

              “Behave yourself,” Prudence said. Then, to Patrick, “Maria’s only joking, of course. She’d never be so… rude.”

              “I’m used to it,” Patrick said bitterly. Joe and Andy moved away slightly, but they were still tensed up, as was Patrick.

              “So then, human,” she said, “Werewolf, faery, and…” her lip curled as she looked at Andy, “Dhampir.”

              “Problem?” Andy asked.

              “We declined the invitation to the genocide ball,” Prudence said scornfully. “If you thought you could bring your eugenics here-”

              “Excuse you,” Pete said, eyes narrowed. “I think you’ll find that we burnt down the Drake hotel. You’re welcome.”

              Prudence frowned, still looking at Andy. “I was informed-”

              “I was being held against my will,” Andy said. “We all were. I can’t help how I was born, can I?”

              Prudence surveyed him again, her gaze softening.

              “No,” she agreed. “Perhaps not. I trust your faery not to lie to me, at any rate. So what brings you to Salem? I thought I told you to leave.”

              “We’re here to stop whoever’s ripping people to shreds,” Pete said. He eyed the semi-circle of armchairs around the fire enviously. “May we sit?”

              “Of course,” Prudence said, gesturing towards the seats. The four of them sat down, and Patrick got a better look at the other two girls. One of them, lounged out across a love seat with one foot dangling over the side, was wearing cat-eye glasses that probably hadn’t been attractive in two or three decades, a black leather catsuit, and had a hip to waist ratio so dramatic it was almost frightening. She smiled up at him, and Patrick immediately looked away. The other was sitting rather primly on a stool by the fire, her skin nearly pitch black and her black velvet dress longer than any of the other girls.

              “I believe you’ve already met Jess and Carson,” Prudence said. “This is Carolyn,” she pointed to the girl tending the fire, “And Maria.”

              “Hell-o there, sailors,” Maria said, adjusting her glasses as she sat up. “You boys come to save us damsels in distress from the big bad monsters?”

              “Don’t frighten them, Maria,” Carolyn said, her voice softer and warmer than anyone else’s.

              “Oh, they’re not scared,” Maria said. The lustful image was marred, ever so slightly, by the fangs hanging out, and Patrick turned away.

              “You were saying?” Prudence prompted.

              “Right, well, we heard that something supernatural was going down in Massachusetts,” Pete said. “We decided we should come and try to stop it. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but-”

              “Humans are getting rent apart for no apparent reason other than some monster’s fun?” Prudence asked.

              “So you’ve heard of it,” Pete said.

              “We’ve been hunting the same creature,” Prudence said. “And we had a decent lead before you four came bumbling around.”

              “Bumbling?” Joe repeated.

              “Blustering works too,” Jess said from the corner.

              “Have you figured out what’s doing it?” Pete asked.

              “Obviously,” Prudence said. “Vampires are doing it.”

              “That makes no sense,” Patrick said, shocking himself by arguing. “Vampires would have drained the victims’ blood. Why else would they kill?”

              “We think it’s some sort of ritual, some kind of new vampire clan,” Carolyn said softly, turning from the fire for the first time. Even her face was kinder and less intimidating than the others. “But we caught one of them in the act. The human was still able to be saved, though, so we focused on her and the vamp got away.”

              “Could it have been a one time thing?” Andy asked dubiously.

              “Nope,” Carson said. “Last night, the man was getting ripped apart before you two scared off the vampire.”

              “And whoever’s doing this can’t have picked Salem without reason,” Prudence said. “Salem is protected. We are its protectors. Bad things don’t happen in Salem, not magical ones, not for hundreds of years because we are here!” she slammed her fist down on the arm of her chair with a bang.

              “Whoever’s doing this is sending a message to us. It might as well be a declaration of war,” she said. “Vampires don’t come to Salem. That’s the rule. And we need to get this scourge out of our city, so, as much as I am loathe to admit it,” she glared up at the band, “We need all the help we can get. Even if it does come from men.” She said the word with a curled lip, like the very idea of men existing was unpleasant to her.

              Joe glanced around at the others before speaking, but Patrick knew what he was going to say, and was sending affirmation as strongly as he could through the bond.

              “We’re here to help,” Joe said. “What’s the plan of attack?”

              “For now, you four ought to rest,” Prudence said. “To the best of my knowledge you all need sleep, and it’s nearing three in the morning, which I understand to still be quite late for those that aren’t fully vampiric. The rest of us will keep looking, and we’ll reconvene when we all wake, yes?”

              “Sure,” Joe said. “We’ll just head back to our hotel, and-”

              “You can stay here,” Prudence said. “I assure you, we mean you no harm, but you won’t be able to reenter without the help of one of us, and I’d like to start planning as early as possible, and if the sun is still up, we’ll need you here.”

              Joe glanced back at Pete who nodded solemnly, and he nodded as well. “Right, well, still, our stuff…”

              “I’ll go get it,” Carson offered, and she slipped out of what looked like a front door, but clearly opened in the middle of the fountain from the brief glimpse Patrick saw from behind her.

              “I’ll take you to your rooms,” Jess said, and Patrick breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Maria or Prudence dong that particular job.

              Jess led them down a hall and up a staircase, down another hall, and up another staircase before pausing in front of a heavy looking wooden door.

              “Do you prefer to sleep together, or apart?” she asked. “I find girls usually want to sleep together and boys apart, but it’s always worth asking.”

              “Do you get visitors here often?” Joe asked. Jess smiled secretively.

              “On occasion,” she hedged. “So?”

              “Ah, two rooms?” Joe said, glancing at the others. They shrugged, and he nodded. Jess opened two doors, across the hall from each other, and walked into each in turn, glancing around once, then turning on the light.

              “The house is finicky,” she said, “Had to make sure these rooms were lit today. Anyway, the bathroom is down the hall and there are towels in the chests at the foot of the bed. Goodnight,” she said, and ran from them in a flash.

              “You and Andy can split a room if you want,” Pete said to Joe. “I know you guys must be less tired than we are, so-”

              “Yeah, go to bed,” Joe grumbled. “You said it’s safe, right?”

              “They don’t mean us any harm,” Pete said.

              “Patrick?” Andy asked.

              “Yeah, I’m tired, you guys can stay up if you want, I just wanna get to bed,” Patrick said, and he and Pete walked into one room, letting the huge wooden door slam behind them.

              “Not exactly subtle about the whole vampire thing, are they?” Pete asked.

              He wasn’t wrong. The room was a mixture of dark panelled wood and red brocade wallpaper, and it had a heavy, almost affronting Victorian atmosphere. A fire had been hastily lit by someone, but it was still chilly. The one, enormous four poster bed seemed to leer at them from the center of the room.

              “Let’s just get some sleep,” Patrick said quickly. “Maybe this place’ll be less creepy in the daylight.”

              “No daylight, dumbass,” Pete laughed. “They’re vampires.”

              “Ugh,” Patrick groaned, “Let’s solve this fast. I can feel myself missing the sun already.”

              “And God knows you can’t skimp out on any vitamin D,” Pete said, and Patrick rolled his eyes.

              “We can’t all be naturally tan.”

              “Yeah, but you’re like, extra white, dude.”

              “Go to sleep,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes, but still grinning and he climbed under stiff, heavy covers. The bed dipped as Pete climbed into the other side, and Patrick was nearly unconscious when he heard Pete speak again.

              “Are you okay?”

              “Yeah,” Patrick rolled over to see Pete’s face lit up by candle light. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

              “The vampire attack, from earlier,” Pete said, looking confused.

              “What, that?” Patrick shrugged. “Same old same old, right?”

              Pete grimaced.

              “Are you sure?” he asked.

              “I’m fine, Pete,” Patrick said, rolling back over. “But thanks for worrying. Nice of someone to remember I’m human from time to time.”

              When Patrick awoke, he was extremely disoriented. There should have been some sunlight to indicate how long he slept, but there was no light in the room except for the low burning embers of the fire. He sat up, restrained by the bedsheets, and checked his phone, which said it was 2:15. Two in the afternoon? It couldn’t be this dark, but then…

              It took a minute for all the pieces to get put together, right around the time Pete wandered back into their room with a towel around his waist, grinning a gleaming white grin at Patrick.

              “You up?” Pete asked. “I think the weird groupie vampire is making breakfast.”

              Patrick had to trust that Pete knew the way back downstairs, because he was certainly lost in all the identical dark hallways with their old oil portraits glaring down at him. They took a few wrong turns, but ended up back in the drawing room they had entered the night previously, and followed the sounds of low, throaty laughter into another room.

              Maria, as it turned out, was not making breakfast, but rather sitting on the counter and tossing her head back from time to time while Carolyn cooked. Andy and Joe were seated around the counter, staring up at her in awe as she continued a story.

              “...And then, after all that, David says to me, ‘Hey. Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ And I say ‘You can’t have, sweetie, I’m only seventeen!’”

              She, Joe, and Andy all howled with laughter, and she flashed her fangs in a brief grin towards Pete and Patrick.

              “Then, of course, you know, poor old Jagger was looking so confused by the whole thing, but it didn’t matter much, they were both out of their minds and it wasn’t even a good lay, they were paying more attention to each other than me.”

              “Wow,” Joe said. “You’ve had an, um, interesting life, huh?”

              “If you think that’s my most interesting story, you don’t have nearly a high enough opinion of me,” Maria said. Then, to Pete and Patrick: “Come, have a seat! Tell me, what’s your favorite band?”

              “You just finished Patrick’s favorite,” Joe said.

              “Oh, big Bowie fan?” Maria asked. “He’s a great musician but man, every time we get together,” she shook her head disdainfully. “Oh well. What about you, sweetie?” She bumped Pete’s leg with her own and gave him a smile that made Patrick want to be in another room or punch something, whichever opportunity came up first.

              “I- uh- I’m a big Metallica fan,” Pete said, his voice a little higher than usual.

              “Oh, those boys,” Maria grinned with her eyes closed, like she was lost in nostalgia. “Yeah, James was a sweetheart, always a great night with him. Lars, on the other hand… well, you know how they say it’s not the size of the waves but the motion in the ocean? There’s gotta be at least some wave, and there just wasn’t with him.”

              Pete laughed a small, disbelieving laugh, and Carolyn huffed from the stove. She was peeling an enormous mound of potatoes, and she gave Maria a disdainful look.

              “I wish you wouldn’t be so crude,” she sighed.

              “I’m not being crude!” Maria protested, sitting straight up on the counter, her curls flying out behind her. “Crude would be saying that Lars Ulrich’s c-”

              “What do you want for breakfast, sweetheart?” Carolyn asked, clamping her hand over Maria’s mouth. “I’m making hash browns, scrambled eggs, and a raspberry danish- vegan, of course,” she added, and Andy gave her a gracious smile. “But would you like anything else?”

              “That sounds fantastic,” Patrick said. “I mean, you don’t have to, though, really.”

              “I bet you’re trying to be polite, but the kind thing to do would be to ask for the biggest spread she can put together,” Maria said. “Carolyn loves to cook, never gets the chance.”

              “You can’t exactly open a bakery that’s only open at midnight,” Carolyn grumbled. “And it’s not often we get human guests. I’m just trying to be hospitable.”

              “Suuuuure you are,” Maria laughed. She turned her fiery gaze onto Patrick. “Sooooo, you’re, what, the drummer?”

              “The singer,” Patrick said.

              “Really? Wouldn’t have pegged you for it.”

              “I get that a lot.”

              “Maria here was last alive in the late 1960’s, isn’t that cool?” Joe said. Traitor.

              “And you dedicated your immortal life to… sleeping with musicians,” Patrick said, trying not to sound too judgmental and failing miserably. Maria’s eyes narrowed to slivers, and she hopped off the counter, her jovial mood evaporating.

              “Yes,” she said, the “s” sound a little too sharp. “Along with saving as many girls’ lives as I can. Have a problem with that?”

              “No, not at all, I just,” Patrick paused, embarrassed, suddenly. “Well, isn’t it sort of degrading for a woman to be seen as just a sex object?”

              Maria laughed as she tossed her hair over her shoulder and fixed Patrick with a murderous gaze.

              “Kid, I was burning my bra before you were conceived. Don’t try and lecture me about feminism,” she said, and she kissed Carolyn on the cheek before darting from the room.

              “What’s your problem?” Andy asked, and Patrick groaned.

              “She just freaks me out, that’s all,” Patrick said.

              “I think she’s great,” Joe said, still snorting. “Jesus. You should’ve heard her talking about The Who.”

              “I’ll pass,” Patrick said. Carson breezed into the kitchen then, four suitcases balanced on one hand.

              “Got your stuff,” she said brightly. Then, “Ooh, human breakfast.” She inhaled deeply, nearly falling into Carolyn with a dreamy expression. “Mmm, that smells amazing. Wish it still tasted good.”

              “I know,” Carolyn said mournfully, then glanced over at the band. “Don’t get me wrong, Patrick, you smell fantastic, but what I would give to taste chocolate properly again…”

              “Thanks, I guess,” Patrick said. Carolyn meant well, he decided, and something about her was warm and reassuring, so he was more inclined to like her than the others. She set down a plate of something steaming that smelled like raspberries, and he liked her even more.

              “Vampires can’t taste anything?” he asked.

              “Well, we can still taste food, it just doesn’t taste good anymore,” Carson explained. “Probably a physiological preventative so some dumb vampire doesn’t go around eating human food and expecting to survive. It makes biological sense, yeah, but it’s a pain in the ass.”

              “Sounds like,” Patrick agreed.

              “Sorry if this is a rude question, but when did you two die?” Pete asked. Patrick cringed and was ready to reprimand Pete, but the two girls laughed.

              “Well, I died in 1998,” Carson said.

              “And I died in 1914,” Carolyn said.

              “We 1900’s girls make up the majority,” Carson said, giving Carolyn a high five. “Anyway, I didn’t die badly. Had a good night. Just got out of an NSYNC concert in Boston, actually, and rode the train back. I was so elated and it was so late at night that I didn’t see the car coming at all. One minute I was walking home, and the next,” she stuck her tongue out, crossed her eyes, and cocked her head. “Anyway, Carolyn found me on her patrol and turned me before I could bleed out all the way. That’s one of Prudence’ rules. We never turn the living, only those who have no other choice.”

              “A married lover of mine wanted to destroy any evidence of having been with a girl like me before he ran for office,” Carolyn said. “He never ended up running. Prudence killed him on sight, and turned me. It happened so long ago I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.”

              “That’s… completely insane,” Pete said, eyes wide. “I mean, wow. What you girls are doing, it’s really cool, it’s just. Wow.”

              “I know, we think we’re pretty wow too,” Carson said. “Anyway, Maria jumped into the Atlantic in January on a bet in 1969, and then Jess was in a mugging gone wrong in 2005, and Prudence was burnt almost to death at the stake in the 1600’s, she’s not sure about the year.

              “The 1600’s?” Patrick said. “Like- like the Salem witch trials?”

              “Not like,” a whispery voice said from behind him. He jumped, and saw Prudence looking very stern right behind his chair.

              “And not everyone who got condemned as a witch went down in history,” she said, then looked around at them. “Meet me in the front room once you’ve finished breakfast, Jess found something last night.”

              Patrick ate all the food quickly, and though still scorching it was delicious, and the four of them were out in the living room as quickly as they could be, though Prudence looked like she had been pacing for a while anyway.

              “Jess?” she said sharply.

              Jess stood up, clasped her hands together, and grimaced.

              “There was another attack last night. They’re getting more frequent and more centralized around Salem. Pieces of the girl were found scattered all through Wyman woods, just the same as everyone else. I, uh, did my best to dispose of the body,” she added, sounding sick.

              “Anything else?” Prudence asked.

              “It was definitely a vampire,” Jess said. “I could smell the tracks until they cut through the bay. From there, I don’t know what happened.”

              “Vampires shouldn’t even be getting into Salem in the first place,” Maria snapped. “They know better. We’re the only vampires here!”

              “Wait,” Patrick said. All five of the girls stared at him, surprised. “Can other vampires even visit?”

              “If they go through us ahead of time and promise not to hunt, why?” Prudence asked.

              “Because a vampire was driving us here the other night,” Patrick said. “Remember? Our taxi driver was a vampire, and he tried to kill us the second we were in city limits.”

              “He had something with him too,” Joe added. “A rosary carved out of jet.”

              It was like he had dropped a bomb in the room. Carson jumped backwards, Carolyn’s hand flew to her mouth, and Prudence looked like she was carved from stone before she spoke.

              “Out of jet? You’re quite sure?”

              “Yeah, I brought it to one of the crystal shops,” Joe said slowly. “Why, what’s wrong with jet?”

              “Do you have the rosary?” Prudence asked. Joe nodded and pulled the long strand of beads out of his pocket and handed it to her. She turned it over once, twice, three times, before biting her lip and nodding.

              “What is it?” Andy demanded after a minute. Prudence took a deep breath.

              “This is the sign of the Dandies,” she announced.

***

            Waiting for night to fall was a pain in the ass, and Andy decided that the second he got home he was going to tell his mother how much he felt for her. He couldn’t imagine doing this full time, the nine of them pacing back and forth and waiting.

              Maria eventually grabbed his arm and said, low and throaty: “Sit down, sweetheart, the bad guys can’t go anywhere in the day either. You’ll wear yourself out.”

              “I’m not that easy to wear down,” Andy said.

              “No, I bet you’re not,” Maria said, looking him pointedly up and down.

              “Head in the game,” Andy said.

              “You should see my game when it comes to head,” Maria muttered, just low enough that Andy could barely hear it. He smirked a little.

              “Why would the Dandies do something like this, anyway?” Joe asked. “Aren’t they all old fashioned drink you to death vampires that think humans are less than them? What’s with the ritualistic murders all of a sudden?”

              “Could be due to a change in leadership,” Jess said.

              “Change in leadership?” Andy asked. “What happened to Anna?”

              “Jess happened to Anna,” Carson said with a grin, throwing one arm around Jess’s shoulder. Jess, for her part, rolled her eyes.

              “It was mostly an accident,” Jess said. “But we got into a bit of a turf war over an old human friend of mine. Anyway, it was nasty, and I ended up killing Anna. I guess somebody else took over.”

              “They’re Boston based, right?” Patrick asked.

              “Indeed,” Prudence said. “We provide protection to most of the North Shore community, but Boston is outside of our jurisdiction, as per the agreement we made.”

              “You agreed to let them keep going?” Andy asked, anger flaring up in his chest. Prudence turned her baleful gaze onto him, making him feel suddenly rather small.

              “We could never have defeated them outright,” Prudence said. “There are five of us, and while the Dandies fluctuate in numbers, they usually hold anywhere from twenty to thirty. We would have been destroyed and left all of the North Shore up for grabs.”

              “You sacrificed an entire city,” Andy said.

              “To save countless more!” Prudence shouted. “Do not for a moment think that we do not feel the weight of the deaths of those in Boston. But we cannot take care of everyone. If we did, things would slip through the cracks,” she said, giving Andy a hard look.

              Andy let it drop. He couldn’t approve, but he couldn’t exactly disapprove. And they were trying, which was something almost unheard of. He admired all of the girls deeply, and even though he wasn’t fully vampire, he felt as though he fit in with them. Probably being a man was more of a hindrance than being half human here.

              In any case, arguing wasn’t going to help. They had come up with a very rough plan as to what to do, which consisted, thus far, of leaving Salem after dark and going to Boston, right to where the Dandies’ headquarters were last, and demanding an audience with the leader immediately. Not everyone was overly fond of the plan.

              “We can’t just leave Salem unguarded!” Carolyn burst out for the third or fourth time that night.

              “Nor can we very well split up!” Prudence cried. “I don’t want to leave the city either, but we have strength only in numbers. One of us left alone would be too dangerous.”

              “But we can’t just leave them,” Carolyn protested.

              “We have to,” Prudence said.

              Pete had his own hang ups as well, mainly running along the lines of “Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring Patrick and I right into the heart of a DTK lair?” To Andy’s surprise, Patrick didn’t seem all that concerned with the vampires, for once. Mostly, he sharpened the knives that Carson brought back inside his travel bags and looked resigned.

              Andy was nervous about the situation overall as well, but he couldn’t think of a better idea. At the very least, they could confirm if it really was the Dandies or not. Andy felt sick to his stomach at the idea of running into any of the vampires he met in Chicago, but he had to find out if it was them. Had to know why they were doing this. Because the girl he met in Chicago was crazy, and she hated humans, but she still didn’t seem the type to do something malicious for the sake of being malicious. There had to be more to it than that.

              He also wasn’t exactly looking forward to a group that had only seen him arm in arm with Andrea.

              “Excuse me,” Andy said at last, interrupting yet another argument between Prudence and Carolyn. He started out walking, but once he was out of earshot of the parlor he sprinted into the bathroom, just wanting to be far away from everyone else.

              Andy splashed water on his face and stared down the mirror. The other bad thing about waiting for nightfall, he thought, was letting all of this anxiety build and build and build when he could do nothing about it but wait. The sun couldn’t set fast enough.

              “Battle jitters?”

              Andy spun around to see Maria leaning in the bathroom doorway, her glasses slipped down nearly to the tip of her nose.

              Andy swallowed. Instead of replying, he blurted out: “Why do you wear those?”

              “These?” Maria asked, taking off her glasses. “What if I need them, huh?”

              “You don’t need glasses,” Andy said flatly. “I need glasses. Full vampires don’t need glasses.”

              Maria peered up at him. It was strange, seeing her without her glasses. She was such a vibrant and forceful person that Andy hadn’t realized until then, when they were standing so close, that she was shorter than him. Her eyes were piercing, so intense he couldn’t bring himself to look away from her.

              “I don’t need glasses,” she admitted. “I just like them. Makes me feel more like… more like myself, you know?”

              “Yeah, I do,” Andy said. He took a step closer to her. She rested the tip of her finger on the collar of his shirt. She was standing much too close, her eyelashes far too thick and dark.

              “You know what always helps me get over battle nerves?” she purred, and Andy rolled his eyes.

              “You killed the mood,” he said. “Way too forward.” he jerked backwards and dried his hands off on a scarlet towel. (The decor, Andy decided, was absolutely overkill.) “You just wanna say you slept with the drummer from Fall Out Boy.”

              “Hardly,” Maria said, unperturbed as she leaned against the door frame. “I’ve had far more impressive stories, and in any case, I never go for bassists or drummers unless they’re exceptional or part of a grand slam.”

              “Grand slam?” Andy asked. Maria smirked at him.

              “The whole band at once,” she said. Andy made a face, and she giggled.

              “That’s disgusting, and I highly doubt it’s happened often,” Andy said.

              “Well, less often now that the drugs flow a little less free,” Maria admitted. “Reagan kinda put a damper on my scoreboard with his whole War on Drugs thing, but it used to happen fairly often. Haven’t had one this decade, though. Last was some nasally three-piece. Blink something.”

              Andy’s eyes widened, but he let it pass.

              “But I hate all the talking you have to do to be polite about your one-night stands. Does it have to be complicated? I like you, you like me, we’re young, physically at least, so what’s the harm?” she asked, sidling up to him again.

              “It’s, ah, been a while, for me…” Andy trailed off, embarrassed. “I mean, I never have the time to meet girls. I’ve got a kid, got a band, you know, I’m busy.”

              “Not busy now,” Maria said. “Nothing to do but kill a few hours between now and crunch time,” she said, and leaned in a little.

              “We should go prep,” Andy said. Maria slowly stood upright and moved away from the door frame.

              “If you insist,” she said, but pressed a kiss up against the bottom of his jaw before she flitted away. Though her lips were cold, Andy’s skin burnt where her mouth had touched it, and he was still absently rubbing his jaw when he walked back into the drawing room.

              “We’ll need to head out soon,” Prudence said. “What do you boys fight with?”

              “I carry knives,” Patrick said.

              “I mean, I have a gun, but I never use it. Claws and teeth, mostly,” Joe said with a smile that looked more like a grimace.

              “I’m sort of a hand to hand fighter most of the time too,” Andy said. “Though I’m not opposed to swords.”

              They all turned to Pete, who laughed.

              “I’m more of a “seduce the information out of the villains” kind of guy than a fighter, if you feel me,” Pete said. He shrugged. “I mean, I don’t mind punching some bad guys in the face, but when it comes to vampires that’s a little, uh, beyond me.”

              Prudence scowled.

              “Fae are usually decent fighters,” she said. “Don’t you have any extra powers? A fondness for archery, perhaps?”

              “Nah,” Pete said. “Always kinda wanted a whip, though.”

              “Carson,” Prudence called. Pete’s eyes widened.

              “No, wait, hold on, you don’t have to get me one, I just saw Indiana Jones!” he tried to protest, but Carson had fled from the room already.

              “I have to say, it will be sort of nice to walk down the street without getting catcalled. I suppose there are some perks to travelling with men,” Carolyn said brightly.

              “Aw, damn, you're right, no catcallers,” Carson grumbled. She threw a coiled whip at Pete that he caught with fumbling hands, and continued. “I mean, I guess it'll be a nice change of pace, but I was getting kind of thirsty.”

              Andy's eyes widened but it took Patrick a minute before he gasped: “Wait, you kill guys that whistle at you?”

              “Kill them? What are we, monsters?” Jess laughed. “No, we just drink their blood and scare the living hell out of them.”

              “I like it,” Andy snorted. “You girls are awesome.”

              “I know, right?” Maria said, winking at Andy.

              “ _Anyway_ ,” Prudence said pointedly. “It's dusk. We need to head out soon. Are you all ready?”

              Andy glanced around. Pete was nervously tugging on the tail of the black whip he had coiled in his hands. Patrick had just the tips of his fingers resting on the hilt of his knife. Maria handed Andy a sword (a cutlass, not really his speed, but still fun) and he nodded, gripping it tightly. He couldn't see the girls holding weapons, but they may have just been better hidden.

              “Ahem, before we go,” Patrick spoke up, drawing Prudence's icy gaze to himself. “How are we going? Jess’s car is… nice, I guess, but it barely fit five of us earlier.”

              The vampire girls were stunned. Prudence grimaced.

              “We could take the train, I suppose,” she said at length.

              “But time is of the essence, is it not?” Maria asked. Andy turned and saw that her brown eyes were alight and eager. Prudence, on the other hand, looked pained.

              “I suppose it is,” she agreed, sounding like the agreement caused her physical pain. “Maria, would you care to drive?”

              “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Maria half moaned. She grabbed Andy's hand and began pulling him towards the door. Her hand was strong but so soft and so small; it was shocking. “We're taking the bitch-mobile to Boston!”

              She tugged Andy through the front door, his feet getting immersed in dusky water as soon as he stepped over the threshold. Maria splashed across the fountain with wild abandon, whooping loudly when a group of tourists pointed at her.

             “Can't they see as disappearing?” Andy asked, and she shrugged.

             “Maybe,” she admitted. “But nobody's mentioned it yet.”

              She led the group of them back into the parking garage and all the way to the top floor, finally stopping in front of a short school bus painted to look tie dye.

             “The bitch-mobile?” Andy guessed.

             “My baby,” Maria sighed. “Got her just a few years after I turned immortal. Great for following tours, since the windows are all tinted.”

             “Fucking brilliant,” Andy muttered.

             All nine of them piled into the bus easily. Andy stretched out on a brown plastic seat by himself, catching one more wink Maria tossed at him before she gunned the motor and took off.

             The bus ran exactly how Andy imagined a bus from the 70's would run. It was loud and clunky and bumpy, and the paint on the windows made it nearly impossible for Andy to look out of them and distract himself. Inevitably, his thoughts pulled towards Andrea.

             What would she think, he wondered, of the Salem Bitches? She'd love them, probably. Maybe she'd have converted. Had she known they existed? Would she raise Carmilla around them, teach her how to be strong and take no shit?

              Would the Dandies remember Andrea? It was bad enough with Andy torturing himself, but he didn't think he could stand it if one of them brought her up.

              Mostly, he wondered if, after everything they went through, she would want him to be happy.

             He didn't have much time to chew it over. All too soon, the bus was slowing down in Boston traffic and everyone was growing tense, sitting on the edges of their seats.

             “We'll have to park a little ways away,” Maria apologized.

             “Where exactly is the Dandies’… lair?” Pete asked.

             “The harbor,” Jess said. Andy made a face. What was it, he wondered, with vampires and water?”

             “How can their lair be in the harbor?” Patrick asked.

             “The Dandies are old,” Carson explained, loud enough for everyone to hear. “They’re from England originally, so I’m told. They came here and founded America every bit as much as the humans. Well, not as much, but you see my point. Originally they were in a building by the harbor, but then when Anna took over, she had a bit of a, ah, dramatic flair, shall we say? And they built a new building, and there was a perfect space right underneath it. Personally, I don’t think living underwater would be that cool given how dirty Boston Harbor is, but that’s just me.”

              “Underwater?” Joe complained. “It’s a goddamn pandemic, all these fucking underwater lairs.”

              “We’re as close as I can get,” Maria announced, pulling the bus to a stop. “We gotta go, it’s dark out all the way, and they’ll go hunting soon.”

              “Right,” Prudence agreed. She hesitated over the boys. “I suppose we could run ahead-“

              “All of us or none, right, Pru?” Carolyn said, and Prudence nodded, looking a little abashed.

              Unlike in Salem, the streets of Boston were teeming with life. Lights were on in every building and loud music pounded through the streets. Most men and quite a few women did double takes as the girls walked by, but they didn’t attract as much attention when they were blending in a crowd.

              “How exactly does one enter a reverse aquarium in the middle of Boston harbor?” Joe asked as they walked. A restaurant they passed was blasting “Dance, Dance,” but the vampires didn’t seem to take notice.

              “By putting a regular aquarium on top of it,” Jess said, pointing forward. The New England Aquarium stood a few blocks ahead, and as they approached, Andy couldn’t help but notice that it was completely dark.

              Prudence led the way up to the front entrance, her strides long and powerful, stomping on the concrete whenever she put her feet down. There was still a security guard sitting behind a little window at the front entrance, and she walked right up to him.

              “Sorry, we’re closed,” he said, looking bored and not particularly sorry.

              “We’re here for the nighttime entertainment,” Prudence said. The guard narrowed his eyes.

              “Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

              “We’re from Salem,” Prudence replied. His eyes narrowed further, nearly disappearing behind thick eyebrows.

              “I’ll let them know you’re here,” he said, and walked away quickly.

              “Now?” Joe asked.

              “Now we wait,” Carson said.

              The water in the harbor looked inky black in the dark night, and the breeze that blew off of it was freezing. Andy started drumming his fingers on his leg after a minute, and he could see Patrick wrapping his arms around his chest.

              Eventually, the security guard threw open the door wide and beckoned them in.

              “John would like to speak with you right away,” he said, and Prudence nodded.

              “Understood,” she said, and once they were all over the threshold, she gave him a withering look. “I know the way. Thank you for your time.”

              Scowling, the guard returned to his post, and the nine of them walked directly to the back of the aquarium. It took a lot of willpower for Andy not to stop and stare at all of the fish, the sea turtle lazily gliding across a cylindrical tank that filled up the middle of the room, but they were on a mission, and he wasn’t walking slow enough to stop properly.

              Prudence shoved her way through a door that was labeled “No Admittance” that led straight into an elevator that barely fit all of them. Andy sucked in his breath as the elevator shot down, and Prudence cracked her knuckles.

              “Get ready,” she said in a low voice, and Andy brushed his fingers against the hilt of his sword just to remind himself it was there.

              The doors opened, and though Andy thought he was prepared for anything, he was caught off guard by the décor. The Dandies, to him, had always seemed so formal and conservative, but the interior looked just the opposite of the Salem girls. The walls were glass and water facing on all sides, lit with cool blue lamps scattered throughout, and the white desk and sleek coffee tables made the whole place feel more like a very modern hotel lobby than anything else.

              “John is waiting for you in the reading room,” a well-dressed vampire girl at the front desk said, smiling with her fangs out and leering slightly at the boys. Andy tried to position himself in front of Pete and Patrick surreptitiously as they walked into the door to the side of the desk. Inside, there was a long conference table with one man wearing a well-fitted suit sitting at the end.

              “Prudence,” he said, smiling thinly. Andy didn’t recognize him, he realized with relief. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the Salem girls?”

              “John,” Prudence said. She didn’t sit or say anything for a moment. “How have you been?”

              “Poor, actually,” he said. “Still grieving.”

              “She knew the rules,” Prudence said. “She attacked one of mine.”

              “I never said she didn’t,” John said. He was expressionless. “But I digress. Why have you come here? With-“ he paused. “Mixed company?”

              “Friends of ours,” Prudence said shortly. “Someone’s been murdering people in Salem. Pretty brutally, too,” she said. “Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

              “Murdering people?” John raised one thin eyebrow. “How horrible. How did they die?”

              “Torn to pieces,” Prudence said. “Do you have anything to do with that?”

              “Why would I?” John asked, and Andy could sworn the vampire’s gaze flickered to Pete. “After all, we drink for the sake of sustenance, and no Dandies are allowed within Salem at all.”

              Andy didn’t trust him, but thankfully, neither did Prudence.

              “Dammit, John!” she yelled, slamming her hands down on the table. “They found a Dandy rosary on a taxi driver driving into Salem! How the hell do you explain that?”

              “Perhaps someone misplaced it,” John said dryly.

              “Perhaps you’re already violating our treaty and murdering people for fun,” Prudence said.

              “No Dandy kills without drinking blood,” John said, his voice flat but his eyes angry and murderous. “And no Dandy has set food in Salem since the treaty. No Dandies are behind this killing. I suggest that you leave before I suspect you of violating your end of the treaty. Ask your fae if you don’t believe me.”

              Prudence spun around to stare at Pete, and he shook his head rapidly.

              “He- he isn’t lying,” Pete said. John smiled his thin smile again.

              “It sounds like you have an entirely different monster on your hands, Prudence. I suggest you make sure it hasn’t done any damage while you’ve been off throwing accusations,” he said.

              Wordlessly, Prudence stormed out of the room, the others closely following. Andy glanced back as he left to see John looking very, very smug.

              “He’s up to something,” Andy said as they walked to the elevator.

              “I know,” Prudence growled. “But there’s no way to prove it except to catch him in the act!”

              Once the elevator doors shut, everyone was teeming with ideas, but Andy stayed quiet. He was thinking and he knew that no one in his band would be happy about his idea, but it might work.

              “What about bait?” Andy asked.

              “I am not being bait,” Patrick said, but Andy was already shaking his head.

              “No, not you, me,” he said. Everyone stared at him, and he rolled his eyes. “Come on, I’m half-human. If someone just got a little human smell on me, preferably a tiny bit of blood,” he glanced at Patrick, “It’d be convincing enough. This is their hunting ground, right?”

              “Yeah, it is,” Pete spoke up first. “The most victims by far disappeared from the open air mall nearby. Nearly one a night.”

              “Patrick?” Andy asked, and Patrick hesitantly nodded.

              “As long as you’re careful,” he said, pulling out his knife and preparing to dig into his arm before one of the girls screamed.

              “Are you out of your fucking minds?” Jess yelled, and all of them nodded, aghast.

              “You can’t just- you can’t just use yourself as bait!” Prudence said, scandalized. Andy shrugged.

              “Why not?” I’m pretty durable, you guys’ll be nearby. We do this stuff all the time,” he added, pointing to his bandmates. The girls still looked horrified.

              “Boys!” Carolyn finally yelled. “Testosterone riddled freaks. You seriously think this is a good idea?”

              “We aren’t doing that,” Maria said. “No way in hell.”

              An hour later, Andy was preparing himself to walk through the outdoor mall. He had blood dabbed behind his ears like cologne, and he was steeling himself for whatever came. He was hoping there would just be one, but even if there were a few vampires, well, the odds were still decent they would have the upper hand.

              He walked slowly, trying to look distracted as he did. To keep his mind busy and his eyes unfocused, he tried to feel every stone under his feet, noting the texture and the uneven pattern as he walked. The lights and sounds that infected every other part of Boston were muffled there, though it wasn’t long after one in the morning by the time they had set everything up.

              Andy could hear the cars rattling down nearby streets, but nothing closer until he heard footsteps. Very soft footsteps, barely noticeable, but loud enough to him. Too quiet to be heard by a human. He used all his will to make sure he didn’t react, but he still stiffened just slightly.

              The soft, hunting steps behind him broke into a sprint, and was almost on top of Andy when Andy spun around, jumping onto his attacker and slamming her into the ground. She opened her mouth to scream or to bite him, but he covered her mouth as his band and the other girls ran out of the nearby buildings, grabbing a hold of her as well.

              Carson held the point of a stake up underneath her chin and glared right into her eyes.

              “Is anyone with you? _Tell the truth_.” she demanded, compulsion washing out of her words.

              “No, no, I’m alone,” the girl sobbed as soon as Andy removed his hand. “Please, I’m sorry, don’t kill me!”

              “We’re not killing you. Not yet,” Prudence said, and motioned them back into the store they had commandeered.

              The Hollister had been abandoned for the night, and miraculously had set off no alarms when they broke into it. It also had chairs in the dressing room, which were pretty convenient for tying up vampire hostages.

              “So,” Carson said, whacking her open palm with a stake. “What’s your name, kid?”

              “Lorna,” she sniffed. Her fangs were still out, and she whimpered when Patrick got too close.

              “Lorna,” Carson said. “Are you a Dandy?”

              Lorna looked up at her like she had gone crazy, shaking her head.

              “Of course not!” she cried. “That’s the whole point!”

              “What’s the whole point?” Carson asked. Even without the threat of imminent death, Carson oozed compulsion, and it was easy to see why she ran the interrogations.

              “I’m trying to become a Dandy!” Lorna wailed. “They turned me last week and said if I did this that I could feed again, that I could be one of them!”

              “It’s an initiation,” Pete breathed, and Lorna hiccupped and nodded.

              “They turned loads of us,” she said. “But we only got to feed the first night. Now they say- they say if we feed again here they’ll kill us, but we can’t go anywhere because of the sun, and so we have to try and become one of them.”

              “What exactly is the initiation?” Carson asked. The stake had been dropped somehow, and now she was just looking worriedly into Lorna’s eyes while she cried.

              “To kill a human, to tear them to pieces without taking any blood,” she said, still sniffing. “It’s to prove that we’re stronger than our instinct, because we don’t drink, and also- also to remind us that h-humans are beneath us now. That they don’t deserve to live.”

              She was openly sobbing by then, and Prudence cut her ties and, to Andy’s shock, pulled her into a hug.

              “It’s okay,” she said, rubbing the girl’s back. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do that.”

              Lorna looked up, terrified.

              “But they’ll kill me!” she said, and Prudence shook her head.

              “Listen to me, Lorna,” she said. “If you don’t want to kill people, if you want to live someplace safe and do good and drink when you’re thirsty, you can come with us. You don’t have to die tonight.”

              “How?” Lorna asked, her eyes wide and shiny. Prudence caught Andy’s eyes with a strange expression.

              “We get rid of the Dandies for good, that’s how.”

***

              Pete was fairly certain they were going to die a horrible, horrible death.

              That was an average day for him, but this death seemed over the top horrible. It hinged on too many factors. There were too many things that could go wrong. And if anything at all did go wrong, he was going to drown in very cold, very polluted water before the sun rose.

              Lorna, as it turned out, was a very nice girl, although she was terrified of fighting. Patrick pitied her enough to eventually run down to the convenience store and whip up some of the Fall Out Boy famous vampire blend that they fed Andy with (99 parts tomato juice, 1 part Patrick blood, and a quick spell to sink in the sympathetic magic) and it seemed to tide her over. She was waiting right outside the aquarium in the little hippie school bus, with instructions to run away and save herself if they didn’t do this in time.

              Her instructions weren’t all that comforting to Pete, though, as he was continually being reminded, his part was easy.

              The sky was just beginning to get lighter as Pete walked up to the security desk at the aquarium. The horizon turning a dark blue, Pete knocked on the window and woke the sleeping guard, then let all of his anxiety loose, flowing through him like an electric current until he could see his eyes glowing in the window’s reflection.         

              “You’re going to let all of us in and not inform your superiors,” Pete told him. The guard nodded dully.

              “I’m gonna let you all in,” he said, throwing the door open.

              “Dude, you’re like a Jedi,” Carson said approvingly as they walked past the security guard.

              The nine of them called the elevator, and Pete felt his chest tighten as the doors opened. The ride down was dead silent, and he kept his hand on the whip they gave him, a stupid glamorous weapon he didn’t even know how to use.

              “It’ll be okay,” Patrick said quietly, squeezing Pete’s hand. Pete nodded, almost convulsively.

              The second the doors opened again, Joe raised his gun and took out the girl at the front desk with one bullet to the head, knocking her backwards into the wall with a bang and a puff of smoke.

              “She’s not dead,” Joe warned, “Just slowed down.”

              “She’ll be dead soon,” Prudence said. “Do you think it was loud enough.”

              “Oh, it was loud enough,” Andy said. “Brace yourselves.”

              Pete threw his jacket into the elevator doors, and a group of five ran in at first, all of them wearing security outfits, and the Salem girls ran forward, staking them before they could think to fight back. One of them ran out of a smaller hall where the elevator bank was, and Pete instinctively lashed out with the whip. To his surprise, he tripped the vampire, and Patrick staked it in the back.

              “How many?” Joe asked.

              “Six on my side,” Jess yelled.

              More and more vampires began pouring in chaotically, but the Salem girls were fighters like Pete had never seen before. His band was good, they were impressive, but these girls were like a machine, mowing down the vampires almost as fast as they came out, lopping off heads two at a time and working in unreal synchronization.

              Pete wasn’t terrible at working the whip. He could do enough to keep a few of the vampires back, if not actually take them down. Actually, it was sort of invigorating being part of the fight, snapping his wrist out at a snarling vampire and watching it go down in time for Patrick to either stake or behead the thing.

              “This is EXACTLY like Indiana Jones!” Pete cried gleefully, and Patrick, face sweaty and annoyed, glared up at him.

              “Head in the game, Pete!”

              Just as they were starting to get outnumbered and Pete was getting nervous that the plan might not work, a loud voice reverberated through the whole room.

              “ ** _STOP_**!”

              Pete was unaffected, but he let the whip drop to his side anyway, feeling the compulsion and knowing it was best to stop with everyone else. At his side, he felt Patrick slowly lowering his knife as well, untouched by the compulsion.

              Pete looked up to see John, the vampire from earlier, looking wild eyed and frantic as he ran into the lobby. He snarled as he caught sight of them again, looking ready to tear them all limb from limb.

              “You,” he growled, his fingers clawed and an animalistic expression on his face. “Come to kill some more of your own for fun?”

              “Not for fun,” Prudence said, just as angrily. “I met one of your new recruits. Do they get bonus points for killing in Salem?”

              “Prudence,” John shook his head. “Fine. You’ve made a brilliant discovery. And we were well within our rights given the parameters that YOU set. So what? The nine of you are going to kill every one of us?”

              “That was the idea,” Prudence said, and Pete began creeping towards the elevator that they forced to stay open, very slowly.

              “Kill them,” John commanded, and the second the words left his mouth Joe shot at the huge glass window, the bullet embedding in the glass and doing nothing to break the window. John gave them a disparaging look.

              “Was that it?” he asked.

              Without responding, all of them but Andy ran backwards into the elevator, Pete snatching up his jacket and slamming his hand down on the button to make the door close. In the same moment, Andy lurched forward and slammed his shoulder into the window where the bullet had already lodged.

              Pete caught one last look at John’s horrified face as the glass made a sickening cracking sound. Water began to pour in on the room as the elevator zoomed up to the ground floor of the building.

              “Hurry up, hurry up,” Maria muttered, her ankle shaking as the elevator rose.

              “We’re going to make it,” Carson said, but Pete could tell that even if she wasn’t lying, she wasn’t convinced.

              The doors opened into the aquarium again, and the five girls ran for the van, parked just outside with Lorna motioning for them to hurry, while the boys sprinted past it and around the aquarium to the harbor.

              “ANDY!” Joe shouted. Heads were just beginning to bob to the surface of the water, and John, feral, his suit soaked, was moving towards him with unnatural speed.

              “ ** _Stop swimming!_** ” Pete gasped, his eyes alight, and John stopped for a moment before struggling forward, slower now.

              But it was all the delay they needed.

              The sun’s first bloody beam crept over the surface of the water, and the harbor filled with screams as Andy swam towards the shore. As soon as the sun struck the vampires, they collapsed into dust, no more than flotsam on the tops of the waves. Andy cut through the debris quickly and hauled himself up onto the dock, panting with exhaustion.

              “That was brilliant,” Pete croaked. “Horrifying, but brilliant.”

              “Well, at least there’s a moral to the story,” Andy said, still gasping for breath. “Um. I’m not sure if the moral is that Victorian houses are safer for vampires or something about not throwing bullets in glass houses, but there’s a moral, definitely.”

              “Come on,” Joe said, helping Andy get to his feet. “We need to get back to the girls.”

              Joe knocked five times on the door of the bus, very slowly, then pushed the door in for all of them to climb back on. He shut the door, and the girls pushed aside the curtain they had rigged up to separate the back. Their faces lit up when they saw Andy with them, and Maria ran forward, throwing her arms around his neck and placing a very wet kiss on his cheek.

              “You did it! I told them boys could fight too!” she cried, ruffling Andy’s still wet hair. All of the girls, even Prudence, looked impressed, and Lorna was tearing up.

              “They’re gone?” she asked. “Like, really gone?”

              “Really, really gone,” Pete promised. “Light penetrates about a hundred feet deep, trust me, they didn’t get out of that.”

              “Oh, I’m sure one of them managed to slip away,” Prudence said, annoyed. “They’re slippery like that. But they’re more than decimated. And I think… I think Boston is going to be a lot safer because of it. Perhaps you were right. But don’t let it get to your heads,” she added quickly.

              “And now, in honor of our victory, we’re stuck in a school bus for the rest of the day,” Jess said, flopping down onto a seat. “I suppose it could be worse.”

              “Then it sounds like you guys have a lot of time to get to know your new roommate,” Joe said, nodding back at Lorna. She glanced down at the floor, looking like she would have blushed if she still could have.

              “Guess we do,” Jess said, grinning. “I’m not the youngest anymore. Sweet. I don’t suppose you’re gay?”

              “What?” Lorna asked, pulling back. “I mean, wait, what?”

              “Most of us are gay,” Jess said with a shrug. “That wasn’t a come on.”

              “Anyway,” Joe said pointedly. “We should be getting home. Music to play, bad guys to kill, and we’re starting a tour next week, so…”

              “You should get on with your life, yes,” Prudence said, not unkindly. “We can take care of Massachusetts, but it’s good to know that you’re out there, helping out wherever you can. The door won’t open to you, I’m afraid, but we can send your things to you later if you would rather not wait until after dusk.”

              “Actually,” Andy coughed. “I could send your things back. I wouldn’t mind staying in Salem for another day or two. You know,” he glanced down at Maria, “See the sights. I’m sure Carmilla wouldn’t mind another day with her grandma.”

              Pete looked closer at the two of them and noticed their auras properly, seeing the deep reds and hot pinks flickering towards each other, and he glanced down, biting back laughter.

              “I guess we’ll see you next week, then,” Joe said, smirking at Andy. Prudence gave a long suffering sigh, shaking her head and muttering something that sounded to Pete like: “ _Rockstars_.”

              The trip back to the airport was much quieter than the trip to Salem. The three of them decided to take the subway, leery of taxis for the moment. Pete leaned on Patrick’s shoulder most of the way there, suddenly exhausted as the events of the past few days settled down on him in their full weight. Joe spent the whole ride texting Marie, his aura more content than it had been since they left.

              They said their goodbyes at the airport since, for the first time in a long time, they were all going different ways. It felt so strange, Pete thought, that they weren’t all going back to Chicago, back to the apartment to keep drinking cheap beer like water and eating the least expensive pizza they could get delivered. He felt a sudden twinge of nostalgia and loneliness as he turned towards the LA gate, Patrick heading back for Chicago and Joe for New York.

              “See you in a week,” Pete said, lifting his hand up. “Let’s try to have a nice, quiet tour, right?”

              “Sure, quiet,” Joe said, shaking his head.

              “Quiet for us,” Patrick amended. “Minimum of three wendigo attacks, how’s that?”

              “More realistic,” Joe agreed with a laugh.

              “It’s only three months,” Pete laughed, already walking away. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the delay- if you don't follow the tumblr for the fic, I was in Vegas- and I know, ugh, usually I'm late for a good reason, like high school graduation or a death in the family but nope. Saw the Backstreet Boys and had no wifi to post with. (Sidebar, AMAZING show, don't regret it at all, i got like that close to nick carter) Anyway, thank you so much for your patience, and in case you weren't aware, timeline wise we are up to the Honda Civic Tour!!! Oh man, this is the tour featured on Live in Phoenix and I've had the plot for this one planned out for YEARS, so I'm pretty pumped. Also, I'm thinking about starting something a little... different, this month, so keep a weather eye on the blog.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! (And happy birthday, Sam!)  
> Chapter Title by The Runaways


	8. Soul Meets Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete wakes up one morning not feeling like himself...

 

                Pete woke up on the second night of the tour and realized something was off. At first, he thought it was the fact that his throat felt like he had spent the whole night previously swallowing sandpaper, but that wasn’t it. It could have been that he felt strangely heavy on his bed, that his skin felt tighter than normal. It could have been that his bunk no longer featured any pictures of Hemingway or Ashlee, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even that the skin of his hand was much paler than it should have been. No, the most concerning thing that Pete woke up to that morning was that he couldn’t see auras.

                Pete made the mistake of sitting bolt upright, slamming his head into the bunk above him. Eyes streaming, he tumbled clumsily out of bed. Nothing. Nothing on the bus, no faint glimmer from where the driver was, nothing from the other bunk, nothing around his own pale, unfamiliar looking hands. He was on the edge of a panic attack- or, he should have been, but he wasn’t. He was terrified, but he kept waiting for his lungs to stop up, for his chest to seize and his hands to shake. They didn’t. He looked at his hands again. There were no tattoos on them. They were so pale…

                He opened his mouth to say “No fucking way,” but wasn’t sure he was ready to hear himself speak. Hearing a voice that wasn’t his would be worse than seeing, he decided, and instead he pulled himself to his feet and lurched into the tiny bathroom, turning on the light and blinking at his reflection.

                “No fucking way,” Patrick’s voice whispered, Patrick’s lips moving in the reflection in the mirror. Pete lifted his hand, and the Patrick reflection did the same. Pete cringed away from the mirror, and so did the wary reflection of Patrick.

                “No _fucking_ way,” Pete repeated, a little louder, only he still sounded like Patrick. The treacherous reflection still talked when he did. His vision was just a little blurrier than it should have been, and he noticed a pair of glasses on the counter. He thought he might throw up.

                Instead, he screamed, shrill and hoarse from all the singing at the show the night before, and definitely not his own. Just because this body wasn’t so prone to panicking as the one Pete was used to did not mean that it couldn’t.

                His screams were pretty steady for a minute before he heard Andy groaning from the bunks.

                “Will you shut up?”

                “NO!” Pete yelled back with Patrick’s voice.

                “Jesus Christ, Andy,” Andy groaned. Pete stopped screaming for a second. He stepped out of the bathroom to stare at Andy, and Andy stared back at him, eyes wide in horror.

                “What?” Andy asked, face draining of blood.

                “Patrick?” Pete guessed with Patrick’s voice.

                “Oh no,” Patrick-in-Andy’s-body moaned. “No no no no no no no no no no!” his nostrils flared, and he stamped his foot, a hissy fit that would have looked at least a little intimidating on a quick to anger Patrick, but looked silly on Andy. Pete laughed with Patrick’s dry, throaty laugh.

                “It’s not _funny_!” Patrick cried, Andy’s voice cracking on the words.

                “I know it’s not, but I’m hysterical,” Pete cackled. Patrick groaned.

                “This can’t be happening!” Patrick moaned in Andy’s voice, burying his face in his hands. “This is a bad dream. Tell me this is a bad dream!”

                “It’s a bad dream,” Pete said. He marvelled at the ability to lie in this body. “Heh. That’s cool. Ask me what color the sky is!”

                “Pete!”

                “I could tell you the sky is red. Hey, the sky is red!” Pete laughed. It felt nice in this body. Full. He had never thought of himself as fragile, but now he felt sturdy.

                “Pete!” Patrick shouted. “Focus! What the fuck is going on?”

                “Well, I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?” Pete asked, and the rhetorical question sounded much bitchier in Patrick’s voice, he decided. “I’m in your body and you’re in Andy’s body. Which means, presumably, either Andy is in my body and Joe is laughing it up, or…” Pete trailed off pointedly. Andy’s eyes stared at him in disbelief for a second before he screamed again.

                “GET OUT!” he yelled, his throat ripping at the sound.

                “I CAN’T!” Pete yelled back, shouting more out of reflex than out of actual anger. Mostly, he felt bewildered. He raised his hand in front of his face again, clenched his fist, and marvelled at the sensation. “This is pretty cool.”

                “Get out of my body!” Patrick growled, eyes dark.

                “Tell me how, man,” Pete said. “What’s the big deal, anyway? It’s just me.”

                “That’s my problem!” Patrick shouted. Pete felt like he had missed something, because Patrick/Andy’s face was scrunched up in real hurt.

                “We… we should go get Andy and Joe,” Pete said, his tone as gentle and soothing as he could manage. Patrick’s throat was really rough from singing. “Come on, let’s get dressed and make sure they haven’t killed each other yet.”

                “Why would they have?” Patrick asked. He was still smoldering, but Pete could only guess at his emotions. He felt like he had had a sense forcibly cut off not being able to see Patrick’s aura, but it was still Patrick. Pete reached up and squeezed his arm.

                “Just seems like something we should be worried about,” Pete said, then bit his lip. “It’s gonna be fine, dude. Trust me.”

                “How can I trust you when you can finally lie?” Patrick asked, but Pete thought he saw the corners of his lips twitch.

                “Get dressed,” Pete said, rolling his eyes. He needed to put on glasses. Weird.

                Pete flitted to the back of the bus with the intent of throwing on the first thing he found, but of course, nothing could be that simple. Jesus, Patrick and Andy left the bus a mess. Five minutes of searching turned up three mismatched socks, five t-shirts, one gaudy hoodie, and no jeans hidden under mounds of recording equipment. It took him nearly ten minutes to piece anything together at all, and then when he walked back into the main area of the bus, Patrick wrinkled up his nose at him.

                “You’re not wearing _that_ , are you?” he asked. Pete looked down at himself, affronted.

                “What? It’s all I could find!” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He thought he looked fine.

                “That shirt looks ridiculous on me,” Patrick said. “Jesus, you could’ve told me it shrunk.”

                Pete rolled his eyes so hard they hurt.

                “You look fine, dude. And so does, um, Andy? You?”

                “Thanks,” Patrick said drily. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

                The buses, thankfully, were already parked at their next venue. Sitting in a huge grassy swath of field next to an arena, they could be anywhere in the country, and Pete had no idea where. But at the moment, he had nearsighted eyes only for the other Fall Out Boy bus.

                Security wasn’t hounding them this early in the morning, so no one stopped Pete and Patrick as they kicked down the door to the other bus in and stomped back to the bunks.

                Without pausing to consult Patrick, Pete yanked back the curtains to his own bunk, fighting back a shudder at the image of himself sleeping. It shouldn’t have been creepy, but there was just something deeply, deeply wrong with watching himself sleep. Lip curled, Pete shoved his own body, eager to wake him.

                “What?” Pete heard his own voice groan, muffled by a pillow, tangled and curly hair thrown into wild disarray from sleep. Pete’s curled lip turned into a full on grimace as he watched himself sit up and glare at them.

                “Um.” Pete stared at himself, face contorted by a strange feeling, almost akin to disgust. “I think if you look in a mirror you’ll find out that you’re not yourself.”

                “What the fuck are you doing on my bus?” Joe asked with Pete’s voice, his eyes flat in a way Pete could never hope to make them.

                “Joe?” Pete asked. Joe rolled his eyes.

                “Obviously?” he said.

                “Notice something off?” Pete asked him.

                Joe squinted up at him. Pete had no idea how auras would look to someone who had never seen one before, but he imagined it would look pretty strange. Still, he didn’t want Joe to puzzle over it all day, so eventually he pulled the SideKick out of his pocket and flashed the black screen in front of Joe’s face.

                “What?” Joe asked irritably.

                “Oh, Christ, will you just go look in a mirror?” Pete asked.

                “What the hell does that mean?” Joe asked, his face twisting in anger and confusion.

                “What’s with all the noise?” Pete heard Joe’s voice from behind him, and he turned to see Joe getting out of his own bunk. He must have been being piloted by Andy.

                “What the FUCK?!” Joe shouted, jumping backwards into his bunk.

                “That took a while,” Patrick snorted.

                “Jesus fuck,” Andy said. Pete put his fingers on the bridge of his nose and rubbed.

                “We appear to have… um, what would you call this? Freaky Friday’d?” Pete asked Patrick. Patrick rolled his eyes.

                “Andy, you’re in Joe’s body,” Patrick said. “I’m in yours. Pete’s in mine. And Joe is in Pete’s. Just so we’re all clear.” Good thinking, Patrick, Pete thought.

                “This- this is a sick joke, right?” Joe asked, eyes wide.

                “Possibly, but it’s still happening,” Pete said. “Are you gonna need help straightening my hair? Because you have to straighten my hair before we go out and figure this out.”

                “I’m not straightening my hair!” Joe said, affronted.

                “Well, it’s my hair, and yes the hell you are,” Pete said.

                “This is fucked up,” Andy muttered. He had moved into the bathroom, and was staring at Joe’s face intently in the mirror. “This is so fucked up. Joe, you have excellent eyesight.”

                “Um, thanks?” Joe said. “Okay, fuck. Shit. Fuck fuck fuck. Okay. We should, um, set up some ground rules. I can’t breathe.”

                Pete knelt down next to the bunk, biting his lip worriedly. “Hey, okay, keep breathing. You’re probably just anxious, okay?”

                “Yes, thank you, I had figured that out,” Joe snapped. He was rubbing his eyes feverishly. “Everything looks so fucking weird.”

                “Auras,” Pete said, almost apologetically. “We’re all freaked out, so it’s probably pretty bright.”

                “You all look like goddamn fireballs, yeah,” Joe said. He sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Fuck. Band meeting.”

                “Band meeting,” Patrick agreed wearily.

                The four of them moved into the kitchenette, piling around the tiny wooden table. Joe splayed his hands out across the table, drumming fingernails painted with chipped black polish erratically across the surface.

                “Okay,” Joe repeated. His eyes kept darting around at everyone and then back to his hands, and his foot kept shaking, but Pete hoped he could just adjust to it without it needing to be pointed out. “So obviously the priority is sorting this shit out, right? Like, we’re all on the same page?”

                “YES,” Pete said emphatically, in unison with Patrick and Andy. Joe nodded curtly.

                “Good. So then we try to figure out how to get back into our own bodies. But first, in case we’re stuck like this for any length of time, we should set up some kind of agreement.”

                Pete nodded. His stomach wasn’t churning with anxiety the way it should have been, but based on the way Joe’s leg was shaking, the anxious reactions had stayed with his physical body.

                “So, first off, the showering thing?” Joe said, raising his eyebrows.

                “I mean, we probably don’t have to worry about that immediately,” Andy said.

                “But after we perform tonight,” Joe said. Pete’s eyes widened, and Joe blanched as soon as he said it. “Shit. We perform tonight.”

                “Okay, well, I can drum,” Patrick said. “No issues there.”

                “I mean, I can’t do the rhythm guitar, but I know the words to the songs,” Pete said.

                “I probably play bass better than you do,” Joe said blandly. Andy coughed. Pete pulled a pained face, and was further disturbed that Patrick’s face didn’t move the same way his did.

                “We can… have a tech playing guitar offstage?” Patrick suggested.

                “And then everyone will think I can’t play guitar!” Joe shouted.

                “How about Joe is just really sick tonight?” Andy suggest.

                “Ugh, fine. So, showers tonight?” Joe asked.

                “Absolutely not,” Patrick said.

                “Dude-” Pete began.

                “Don’t start!” Patrick said. “Come on, that’s a serious invasion of privacy!”

                “It’s basic hygiene,” Andy muttered. Pete turned to Joe, who looked apologetic.

                “I’m with Patrick, man,” he said. Pete groaned. “What? It’s weird, and I’m hoping we can fix it before it’s too much of an issue. Plus, it’s not like the fans can smell us onstage or anything.”

                “Well I hope we’re allowed to piss,” Pete spat sarcastically. Joe gave him a look.

                “Next point,” Joe said firmly. “Bodily autonomy. Who gets final say, the person inhabiting the body, or the person whose body it belongs to?”

                “Obviously the person whose body- wait, hold on, I’m lost,” Pete said. “The second one, I think.”

                “Agreed,” Patrick said.

                “Agreed,” Andy said.

                “Fine,” Joe said. “Who all are we telling?”

                “Anyone who can help,” Patrick said.

                “Maybe not,” Pete said. The others stared at him, and he shrugged. “I mean, think about it, do we really want the whole tour running around and trying to fuck with us? I think we’ll get much less interference if we keep this to ourselves.”

                “We have to tell someone,” Patrick said.

                “I agree. I think we should tell KTC and Ryan, but we should keep this contained,” Pete said. He was thankful that, not stuck in a fae body, he didn’t feel compelled to tell the truth and admit that he felt embarrassed by the situation. Stupid Fall Out Boy, stuck in yet another stupid supernatural trap.

                “Well, I’m game for trying to keep it down low. For now. Circumstances may change,” Joe said.

                “I agree,” Pete said. Patrick and Andy nodded their consent.

                “Alright, can you think of anything else that need our immediate attention before we start trying to figure this shit out?” Joe asked. The four of them were silent.

                “Pete, your head hurts like shit,” Joe said. “Do I need, like, meds or something?”

                “Yeah,” Pete winced. “I’ll go grab it. And then we’re taking care of my hair.”

                “Fantastic,” Joe groaned.

                “What should we do?” Andy asked.

                “Go call KTC and tell him what’s up,” Pete said. “And then start researching.”

                “How in the shit do you suggest we research this?” Patrick asked.

                “Start with Google and figure it out?” Pete suggested. Patrick sighed and set his laptop up while Pete led Joe into the bathroom.

                Straightening someone else’s hair was a strange experience. It was still his, Pete supposed, but he pretty much could only take care of himself, and working from the back made him take twice as long, and involved him clamping the 400 degree iron down on Joe’s ear once. Joe screamed and swore at him, but, as Pete pointed out, it was technically his own ear, so it wasn’t really like he had injured Joe. Joe disagreed.

                Once that was done, Pete picked up a stick of eyeliner and Joe paled, cringing away from the mirror.

                “How do you do this?” he asked in a small voice.

                “Dude, it’s seriously not that bad,” Pete said. “Look, I swear to god, you can’t even feel it once it’s on. And I wear it smudgey, so you don’t have to worry about messing it up.”

                “Not the damn eyeliner,” Joe said. “The- the auras.”

                “Oh,” Pete said. He shrugged. “I’ve always seen them. Why, is there something wrong with them?”

                “They’re- they’re _scary_ , dude,” Joe said. Pete wrinkled up his nose. “No, I mean it. They’re too fucking bright, and some of them keep _pulsing_. It’s really creepy.”

                “I think it’s creepy not having them,” Pete said. “I feel goddamn blind. Wanna trade?”

                “I’d love to,” Joe sighed. Pete wielded the eyeliner for a second, brought it up to Joe’s face, then seemed to think better of it.

                “Maybe we should just ask, uh, somebody else to do it before we go on,” Pete said. Joe looked relieved.

                “Good idea, man,” he said, exhaling heavily. “Right, I’m gonna go for a walk, maybe grab a slushie or something. I need to clear my head.”

                “I wouldn’t,” Pete laughed. Joe raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to get mobbed?”

                “I think I’ll be fine,” Joe said, rolling his eyes.

                “Your funeral, man,” Pete said. “My funeral? I’m not sure. Bring security, or at least bring Dirty.”

                “Thanks, mom!” Joe called, and he walked out of the bus. Pete thought about calling after him, then decided it was better not to. He wasn’t in the mood to fight, and he didn’t think the fans would actually kill him. Besides, Joe was in the same band as him. It would probably sound a little conceited if Pete pressed the issue.

                Instead, Pete called Ryan. After explaining the issue as quickly as he could (and taking breaks for Ryan to cackle at him over the phone) Ryan said he would look into it, and hung up immediately. Hopefully to start research, but more likely to tell the rest of his band. Oh well. Better having Brendon laughing at them than Gabe.

                Pete had thought, at first, that this body would be mellow enough to just read so that Pete could start working through the stack of books he had brought with him, but Patrick’s body didn’t seem to like sitting still and carving into _The Once and Future King_. Patrick’s body seemed uncomfortable when it wasn’t moving or fidgeting, and eventually Pete felt so trapped by the back room of the bus that he found he had to go outside. To walk. To do something.

                He walked right past Patrick and Andy, still hunched over Patrick’s laptop, and stepped outside, breathing in deeply. Off in the distance, he could see a large plume of grey and black smoke rising out of the trees, where some kids must have set up a bonfire. For some reason, he thought he would feel better on the other bus, though he hadn’t the foggiest idea why. Maybe Patrick had a really strong muscle memory.

                Pete had just stepped onto the bus and exhaled deeply in relief when there was a knock at the door. Pete smirked, thinking it was Joe, come to admit that something had gone horribly wrong, when he threw the door open to see, of all the unexpected people, Victoria. She looked amazing, already wearing makeup and a tight white tank top. Very tight. Pete couldn’t help looking her over, wide eyed.

                “Seeing something you like?” she asked, the corner of her mouth pulled up.

                “Um,” Pete said. “You. Um. I mean, you look nice.”

                “You’re not usually this flustered,” Victoria laughed. Her laugh didn’t sound the way Pete was used to it. It sounded throaty, and her eyes were very dark. “So. Are you going to invite me in?”

                “Um. I mean. I guess?” Pete said, perplexed. “Come on in, then.”

                Victoria walked around him, giving him a quizzical look as she entered. Pete felt like he was missing something. He was blindsided without auras, but he should know this, he should know what came next.

                “Can I help you with something?” he finally asked. He was shoving Patrick’s social reputation down the toilet, probably, but he needed help.

                “I just thought you said it would be nice to hang out. In private,” Victoria said. She stepped forward, was standing way too close to Pete. She didn’t smell like perfume, she smelled like sweat. Pete swallowed convulsively.

                “Um,” he said.

                “You seemed to be… enjoying yourself last time,” she said. Her right hand snaked up the inside of Pete’s shirt and he jumped backwards, crashing into the side of the bus. Something shattered noisily beneath him, and he felt warm blood welling up on his arm.

                “Christ, Patrick, are you okay?” Victoria asked.

                “Are you guys fucking?” Pete demanded. Victoria squinted at him.

                “Me and who?” Victoria asked.

                “You and Patrick!” Pete yelled. Victoria’s expression became even more confused.

                “I’m missing something?” she guessed.

                “Right! Shit! Sorry, I’m Pete,” Pete said. Victoria blinked at him before her expression turned angry.

                “Is this some kind of joke? Because it isn’t funny. Look, if you aren’t interested anymore you could have just said-!”

                “No, listen, I’m Pete! We- we swapped bodies,” Pete said, biting his lip. “Like Freaky Friday.”

                “Like Freaky Friday?”

                “Yes! Patrick’s in Andy’s body!”

                “That’s-! That’s actually too weird for you to be making up,” Victoria decided. “Pete?”

                “Yes!” Pete said emphatically. She stepped back, looking horrified.

                “When were you going to stop me?!”

                “As soon as I figured out what was going on!”

                “You’ve slept with how many girls and it took you that long?”

                “I usually have the help of auras!”

                “What are you screaming about?” Patrick asked, hurrying onto the bus. He flushed as soon as he saw Victoria. “Oh, shit, Vicky-”

                “Patrick?” she asked wearily. He cringed, then nodded. Victoria patted him on the shoulder.

                “Lemme know when you’re feeling yourself again,” she said sympathetically, then dashed off the bus.

                “You’re fucking her?” Pete asked the moment she was gone.

                “Is it any of your business?” Patrick asked coolly.

                “I just thought you would- I mean, Jesus, I thought you were single,” Pete said. Patrick seemed determined not to meet his eyes.

                “I am single,” he said finally. “Vicky and I just have an interesting relationship.”

                “You’re friends with benefits?” Pete asked.

                “Yes,” Patrick sighed. “Can we move on?”

                “What’s there to move on to?” Pete asked, smirking. Patrick rolled his eyes.

                “I came to get you because Andy and I found something weird out in the woods.”

***

                Andy was having a bad morning. Based on the throbbing headache he had, he decided it was safe to assume that Joe had been drinking the night previously. And drinking a lot. Andy had never had a hangover, not really, so he couldn’t say for sure what this was, but it was all that made sense to him given that the mere thought of food made him nauseous and his head was throbbing.

                Andy didn’t like being a vampire. He didn’t like drinking blood or being sensitive to the sun, but it was still who he was. And there were, of course, perks. The things he did like included super strength, super speed, the ability to protect his friends, having a connection to his mother and his daughter. And he sure as hell didn’t want to be Joe Trohman.

                After a very long morning of searching for any kind of answer on the internet (with no results other than a TV Tropes webpage and some Harry Potter fanfiction), Andy was feeling a little bit hopeless. If they changed then logically there had to be a way to change back, but he had no idea how they could have swapped in the first place.

                “Maybe,” Patrick had suggested wearily, using Andy’s voice, “Maybe we have to learn some important life lesson about each other before we’re allowed to switch back.”

                “Like what?” Andy demanded.

                “How hard it is to be one another?”

                “I don’t need to be taught that!”

                He didn’t need to be taught that. Andy never wanted to be craving a cigarette, before noon or ever. He didn’t want to have three other voices that weren’t his scrabbling around in the back of his head. He certainly didn’t want to feel something dark and animalistic coiled inside of him, something he knew instinctively he could unleash whenever he needed to, but that he was also afraid of escaping on its own. He had no doubts that it wasn’t easy being Joe. No one doubted that it was hard being Pete, or Patrick, and he was pretty sure that Patrick already sympathized with the bloodlust that he dealt with. So.

                The two of them came to the conclusion that it had to be sabotage. Some enemy, maybe a surviving Dandy or one of Brandon Flowers’ cronies, had decided that they needed to be punished. And all they had to do to switch back was find the spell and the spellcaster and make them reverse it. A simple plan, but very difficult to execute, given the sheer amount of old enemies they had and the distinct lack of free time.

                The two of them had decided, in fact, to go talk to Pete and see if he had any ideas as to where they should start, when they saw the plume of fire erupting into the sky out from beyond the edge of the copse of trees.

                “That looks-”

                “Bad,” Andy finished Patrick’s sentence, chewing on his lip. He felt anxious, wanted to smoke, was not going to smoke. “Okay. You go get Pete, I’ll run ahead and check it out.”

                “You sure?” Patrick asked. “I mean… you’re not yourself.”

                “I think a werewolf is strong enough to accommodate whatever I come across,” Andy said, and he took off at a jogging pace. Never mind that he had no idea how to shift into a wolf.

                Andy crashed through the sparse undergrowth and trash left amongst the trees, following the overwhelming scent of something burning. It was a coppery stench, and the closer he got, the more his mouth welled with saliva, preluding the urge to vomit. The visceral disgust he felt at the metallic scent made him take far too long to realize that it was blood. It didn’t smell appealing to him anymore. How odd.

                He followed the scent of blood and smoke, resisting throwing up the whole time. Did blood smell this disgusting to everyone? Or was Joe just that physically, innately good? He supposed he ought to ask another werewolf to know for sure.

                It took him only a few minutes of running before he came onto what had to be the place. There was a huge clearing in the forest, not a natural meadow, but a charred wasteland. A few burnt and blackened tree stumps stuck out of the ground, but for the most part, nothing remained in the area. Large and teardrop shaped, the ground was pitch black, and though the smell of blood still filled the air, Andy couldn’t see any signs of a struggle. A few sparks drifted off of the stumps on the ground and clung to the living leaves of trees before flickering out.

                “What the hell happened here?” Andy murmured aloud. Joe’s voice sounded nothing like his own, and it was nice to hear, even if Andy knew no one else was there with him.

                He took a hesitant step forward, the scorched earth and ashes crackling under his feet as he did. The air still felt hot, and as he walked, he had to brush sparks off of his clothes when they flew up to greet him. Whatever had been here, Andy had no doubt that it was unnatural. The trees surrounding the burnt area were all still dewy and damp, very healthy, and very hard to burn. Lightning couldn’t have done this much damage. And he couldn’t think of a human who would. So then, what?

                Andy knelt down to feel the ashen ground when he heard a strangled cry come from the trees in front of him. It was very faint, but enough to go on, and he ran forward, skidding down to his knees next to the source, bile yet again threatening to make an appearance. This was the source of the coppery, burnt blood smell. It was human, but not clearly, the figure on the ground. Contorted and burnt black and red, the only thing that still looked perfectly humanoid were its eyes, wide, blue, and fearful.

                “’elp,” they croaked. They reached up their arm, very slowly, making a sound like crackling wood as they lifted it.

                “No, no, sh,” Andy said. He was overwhelmed with panic, but he forced himself to stay calm. If it were actually Joe here, he would know what to do. He would take charge. When in Rome, Andy thought, a little hysterically, but he put a hand on what he thought was their cheek, and they gave a shuddering sigh.

                “You’re gonna be okay,” Andy whispered. They just looked up at him, huge eyed.

                “ve never seen nything like it,” they said. A crashing sound came from behind them in the forest, and they gasped, a horrible, creaking gasp.

                “You should run,” they whispered.

                “I’m not afraid of whatever it is,” Andy said. The dark thing inside of him, hot and angry, felt strong, begging to be ripped out into the open, and Andy had no doubt he would be able to shift if something came out of the trees.

                “So big,” they said. Andy could barely hear their weak pulse, and he was overwhelmed with the realization that he should kill them.

                “What did you see?” Andy asked, desperate to keep them talking, to prolong the inevitable.

                They whispered something, their voice the faintest sound of ash being blown from a fire. Andy leaned in closer.

                “Please, come on, what did you see?” he pleaded.

                “Dragon,” they whispered. They made a strangled, pained noise, and Andy closed his eyes.

                “Do you- do you want me to end it?” he asked.

                “Please,” they whispered. Andy sucked in all his breath, then he grabbed their head and twisted until he heard a snap. He immediately covered his mouth with his hand, smearing soot across his face as he did. This time, he did throw up, leaning over and letting alcoholic smelling liquid drip from his mouth.

                “Joe?” he heard a voice call from behind him. Patrick, or, no, Pete.

                “I’m still Andy, fuckface,” he yelled, but his voice cracked. Two people ran up on either side of him, and he immediately felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

                “Who was he?” Pete asked quietly.

                “I don’t know,” Andy said. “I couldn’t tell. But they- they said it was a dragon that did this. But that’s not possible, right?”

                He looked up at Pete and Patrick for reassurance, but he saw only Patrick’s and his own face looking back at him with concern and fear.

                “It shouldn’t be,” Pete said. “I’ve heard of a lot of things out there, but dragons- they’re just stories. Or, if they’re not just stories, they’re extinct. We would have heard if they existed. They’re huge.”

                “He said it was big,” Andy said desperately. “But there’s no way, right?”

                “No way,” Pete agreed, a little too quickly. “But he could’ve seen a demon and mistaken it for a dragon.”

                “Is that better or worse?” Patrick asked.

                “Depends on the demon,” Pete said darkly. “But the one I’m worried about- well, he’s not much of a fire guy.”

                “Should we search the woods? See if anything’s still here?” Andy asked.

                “Maybe,” Pete said. Andy gave one last glance to the dead person, then turned away, back to the drop shaped burnt area.

                “We should start from the small end,” Patrick said softly.

                “Why?” Andy asked.

                “The fire would have spread the further out it went. It started there,” he decided, and walked over to the thinnest part of the blackened woods. Sure enough, it was the darkest part, no sparks still clinging to the ground there, but there were no signs of anything else either. Andy pleaded with himself to think, to pay more attention, to see or hear or smell something that the others couldn’t, but he wasn’t used to working with Joe’s senses. He certainly wasn’t used to the faint concern coming from Patrick and Pete humming in the back of his head, or the repulsion at the stench of blood that still filled the air.

                The three of them scoured the trees, looking for any signs of disturbance, but couldn’t find anything. Not even broken branches to show where something might have stood.

                “Might’ve been a demon, then,” Pete said, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose from where they had slid down, his face drenched in sweat. “Demon could’ve materialized out of nowhere.”

                “Dragon could’ve flown,” Patrick said softly, but Pete, stuck with human hearing, seemed to have missed it.

                “We should go back,” Pete said eventually. “We’ve got soundcheck in an hour and I’m gonna have to fake a pretty convincing hand injury if you don’t want the world thinking you can’t play guitar, Patrick.”

                “Ugh,” Patrick groaned. He stretched, and gave Andy an apologetic grin. “Can you help me with the drums? I know the songs, but I’m not sure I know them well enough.”

                Andy nodded mutely and turned to go back to the tour buses. He felt strange, and not just in that he desperately was craving a cigarette and some bacon, but in that he had killed someone, his friends had watched him do it, and here they were, going about their day. Business as usual. It felt worse than mourning, worse than being vindictive. They left a body in the woods to be someone else’s problem because they had a concert to perform. And though he knew for a fact there was nothing in his stomach, Andy felt nauseous.

                “We have to find this thing,” he burst out suddenly, halfway across the grassy field that stretched between the woods and the buses. Pete and Patrick gave him odd looks, but they nodded their assent.

                “We’re going to, man,” Patrick said. “But right now I think our biggest worry is, you know,” he gestured down at himself in Andy’s body. “Whatever it is will be a hell of a lot easier to take out once we’re ourselves again.”

                “Right,” Andy agreed, shaking his head and trying to clear it. “But if whatever this is is killing people-”

                “Oh shit,” Pete groaned.

                Joe-in-Pete’s-body was walking up to meet them, his clothes torn slightly and looking distinctly frazzled. Andy tried not to laugh, but a giggle still slipped out anyway.

                “Rough morning?” Patrick asked, the dry tone not quite achieved with Andy’s voice.

                “I went to the freaking gas station in your goddamn tinted window car and still got goddamn mobbed,” Joe snapped. “Jesus, every single person out there is a piranha with a cameraphone!”

                “Tell me about it,” Pete said solemnly. He brightened up quickly. “Hey, I bet _I_ could go out and get a slushy.”

                “Thanks, you’re a real ego boost, you know that?” Patrick said.

                “Did I miss anything fun here?” Joe asked.

                “Dragon attack,” Andy said gruffly. Joe stared.

                “Claimed dragon attack,” Pete insisted. “One casualty, but nevermind that now, we have soundcheck.”

                “Of course we do,” Joe said faintly, and the four of them set off into the venue. A sudden wave of panic washed over Andy as he realized what the venue meant. Hanging out around other people, trying to act like Joe. _Shit_. What did Joe even act like? Andy rolled his shoulders forward and tried to look bored and nonchalant, not ever-vigilant as he had been in the forest.

                “Good luck,” Joe whispered.

                “You too. Can’t be easy being Pete,” Andy said.

                “You kidding? All I have to do is annoy the hell out of everyone,” Joe said, raising his voice slightly. Pete flipped him off without turning around, but Joe let out a cackle of a laugh, catching sight of Gabe at the end of the hall. “That’s my cue…”

                Joe sprinted down the hall and tackled Gabe, followed by a flurry of cursing. Andy rolled his eyes and kept following the paper signs taped up in the hall, leading the way to the stage. He made it nearly to the stage before someone pressed a guitar in his hands and he almost dropped it in shock.

                “Huh? No, I can’t,” Andy said quickly, meeting Diaz’ eyes in a panic. He raised his eyebrows.

                “You wanna start with the other one?” he asked.

                “Um, no,” Andy said. “I’m. Um. Sick?”

                “You’re sick?” Diaz asked.

                “Uh-huh,” Andy said. He coughed once, unconvincingly.

                “Not that funny, dude,” Diaz said.

                “Look, just trust me when I say I can’t play tonight, okay?” Andy pleaded. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to.”

                “Whatever you say, man,” he said, walking off. Great. Andy clearly wasn’t a very good Joe, but he trailed after Patrick as he sat down nervously at the drum kit.

                “You got this?” he asked, and Patrick nodded jerkily.

                “Yeah, totally,” he said. “Been drumming my whole life,” he added with a dry laugh.

                “I’m good to go,” Pete said from the microphone. Joe ran in, looking even more rumpled than he had before and grinning wildly. A guitar tech stood in Joe’s usual space, and they started playing.

                Andy, in a show of deeply loving his friends, did not cover his ears. He did wince, however. Pete turned around, looking horrified.

                “Try again,” Andy said, though he didn’t want to hear whatever the four of them were doing again.

                It wasn’t good. Patrick drummed too loudly, putting as much effort into it as he would if he were human in spite of the fact that he had vampire strength now. Pete sang with passion rather than paying attention to form, and he ended up breathless within minutes. Joe was good, but not quite as steady as Pete, and the tech had none of Joe’s flair, but after a half hour or so of a soundcheck that was more band practice than actually making sure the sound systems worked, they sounded like themselves. Or at the very least, like a decent cover band.

                “You guys were, um, great,” Andy said. Joe gave him a pained look.

                “All things considered,” Andy amended.

                “Whatever,” Pete said. He was flushed and sweaty and embarrassed looking. “Let’s go get some lunch and then find our bad guy.”

                “Sounds like Tuesday,” Andy muttered.

                The venue was catered, but Andy usually provided his own food. Thankfully, Patrick stopped before getting in line, pulling a face but walking over to Andy.

                “Vegan corn dogs?” he guessed.

                “You got it,” Andy agreed. Joe rolled his eyes, but they decided pretty quickly that a couple of days of veganism wouldn’t kill him, and in any case, Andy wasn’t about to start eating meat in any body. No matter how excellent the chicken smelled. _Canines._

                Already used to vegetarianism, Patrick didn’t put up a fight when it came to food. The diets weren’t too bad, although Andy had an uncomfortable feeling that if he stayed in this body for very long he would cave and eat something meaty, which wasn’t something he wanted to do.

                While they ate, Pete filled Joe in on the strange burnt section of the forest in a low, careful voice. Joe made faces and glanced out at the trees, but there were no signs of disturbance now.

                “So what do we think?” Joe asked.

                “Well, dragons aren’t real, so,” Pete said.

                “Werewolves aren’t supposed to be either,” Joe said, smacking Pete on the forehead. “But all we’ve got for sure is… big and fiery?”

                “Basically,” Andy said. “So what, should we search the woods again? I don’t want to wait for- for that to happen to someone else.”

                “We didn’t find anything the first time,” Pete protested. “Shouldn’t we focus on the problem at hand?” he asked.

                “The ‘problem at hand’ isn’t life threatening,” Patrick pointed out. “Besides, I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t have enough magic know-how to do anything. If you want to slog through fanfiction, be my guest, but I have superstrength,” he said, flashing his teeth in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “I think we should go hunting.”

                “What’ll we see that we missed the first time?” Pete asked.

                “Anything alive,” Joe said, eyebrows raised. “Auras, remember? Let’s go do a sweep. It gives us an excuse to avoid the others, anyways.”

                They went back into the woods, Joe leading the way this time, leaning forwards like he was trying to sniff something out. Andy had to direct him, since he couldn’t easily smell the fire and blood anymore, but they made back to the charred patch fairly quickly.

                “Jesus,” Joe muttered.

                “What? What do you see?” Pete asked, his voice almost a whine. Andy was sympathetic- at least he had ended up as Joe. He would have felt lost if he had no extra senses.

                “It looks… angry. How can the ground look angry?”

                “Well-” Pete began, Before he could go on, there was a roaring sound from the right. Andy turned to face it, heard a crash through the trees, and he jumped forward, instinct uncurling something dark inside his chest.

                Mid-jump, he shifted, and suddenly his vision went red as he was overwhelmed with pain.

***

                Joe couldn’t process things as quickly as he needed to in Pete’s body. He felt slower, weaker, and sometimes he felt like he was even seeing and hearing the world slower than he was supposed to. So it took him too long to realize that Andy had noticed anything off, and much too long to realize what he was planning on doing. By the time Joe was yelling at him to stop, Andy was already halfway through his transformation, the flash of red around him so bright it burnt Joe’s eyes.

                When the werewolf landed on the ground, there was half a beat of silence and then howling, loud and pained and drowning out any other sounds in the forest. Joe skidded forward, unsteady in Pete’s antsy body, and immediately had his hands laced in the wolf’s fur, trying to rub his back and calm him down.

                “Andy, Andy, please, come on, man, just breathe,” Joe pleaded, stroking his fur. Andy yowled, his claws scrabbling senselessly at the dirt. Joe glanced in the direction the noise must have come from, but he couldn’t see anything, not even the multi-colored glimmer that he took to be an aura. “Jesus Christ, you’re such an idiot,” he groaned.

                “What’s wrong with him?” Pete asked, sounding full of fear in a way that Joe wasn’t used to hearing with Patrick’s voice. Joe felt suddenly self-conscious, embarrassed for Andy and himself.

                “He’s in pain,” Joe admitted quietly. Andy threw his head back and howled again, dissolving into whimpers soon after. Joe winced, combing out Andy’s fur. “Hey, c’mon, it’s okay.”

                “Why’s he in pain?” Pete asked blankly.

                Joe didn’t want to have this conversation. He’d been turning since he was twelve, and outside of his mom, this wasn’t something that he talked about.

                “Because shifting hurts,” Joe said, pressing his lips together. He was still looking at Andy’s aura, and it didn’t look too painful. Luckily, it seemed his body still held together its reflexes to shift as fast as possible, so Andy wasn’t really in pain anymore, just shock.

                “You never told me shifting hurt,” Pete said. He sounded weirdly betrayed, like somehow this had hurt his feelings, and that irked Joe to no end.

                “Well, aura reader, what the hell did you think all the red was?” he snapped. He felt another strange surge of embarrassment, and one of almost anger. Pete had to have known.

                “It always went away so fast,” Pete said, and he sounded horrified. “I thought it was just… energy.”

                “Of a sort,” Joe said. He looked up, and the two of them looked so sad that he closed his eyes and sighed before explaining. “Look, shifting hurts. Your whole body has to break and reform. But I can do it fast and I’m used to it. Clearly he isn’t.”

                “Does it hurt that much every time?” Patrick asked. Joe shrugged.

                “Not really. It was bad when I was a kid, but I do it so fast that I hardly notice it. I think he’s just in shock ‘cause he wasn’t expecting it.”

                Andy whined in agreement.

                “Now, the real question,” Joe said, pursing his lips together, “Is what the hell made him shift in the first place?”

                “You didn’t hear it?” Patrick asked. Joe gave him a look.

                “Oh, right,” Patrick said. “Oops. Well, I heard a crashing coming from the woods. Like a footstep, but really, really heavy.”

                “Given the vampire hearing, you could’ve heard a regular footstep for all we know,” Joe said, irritated.

                “Andy heard it too,” Patrick said defensively. “And also, I could, um, smell something.”

                Everyone looked up at him, and Patrick looked embarrassed. He shrugged self-consciously.

                “It smelled like- I don’t know. Like burning hair, or something. It was faint, but it came from the same direction.” Joe’s eyes narrowed as Patrick spoke.

                “Is it still there?” he asked sharply. Patrick shook his head.

                “No, I haven’t heard or smelled or sensed anything since Andy started howling,” he said. “Maybe we scared it off.”

                “Damn,” Joe cursed. “Should we go after it anyway?”

                “Can we?” Pete asked, glancing down at Andy. Andy snorted loudly and heaved himself shakily to his feet.

                “I’m guessing you don’t wanna turn back?” Joe asked, and Andy shook his head fervently. “Right, well, you can probably smell the best anyway. Especially like that. Course, it would help if we could hear you talking, but…”

                Andy took off running in the direction he had heard the noise coming from. Patrick was after him at once, and they left Pete and Joe in the dust.

                “Do we do this to you guys often?” Joe asked, annoyed. He grabbed his own clothes off the ground for Andy, whenever he worked up to turning back.

                “Not all the time,” Pete said fairly. “But yeah. Patrick and I get lots of BFF bonding done while you and Andy run laps around us.”

                “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Joe ribbed, cracking a smile. And though no color rose in his cheeks, Pete’s aura flared pink and embarrassed like a blush, and Joe felt all the air leave his chest.

                “Oh,” he breathed, stopping still in his path as he watched the myriad of colors swirl around Pete, embarrassment and longing and jealousy and _love_. How could he have been bonded to all of them for so long and never have noticed, never connected the dots?

                “Oh what?” Pete snapped, his eyes alight with anger. Joe inhaled deeply, meant to say ‘nothing,’ but couldn’t make the word come out.

                “You’re in-”

                “Shut up!” Pete yelled, chest heaving.

                “I didn’t mean to say anything,” Joe said, holding his hands up. Pete faltered.

                “You can’t lie,” he said, dully. Joe gave him a look that probably ended up looking pitying. Pete closed his eyes, and he looked so resigned that he could have actually been Patrick.

                Joe wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to tell Pete he wouldn’t say anything. Tell him that he should say something, should talk about, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Instead, he swallowed hard.

                “We should go after them,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder. Pete nodded, and the two of them set out walking.

                As they walked, Joe realized they could easily get lost in this woods, especially lost without the extra senses that were such a part of him they didn’t feel extra. He thought he heard rustling and crunching up ahead, but for all he knew, it could be the sound of their own feet.

                The closer they got, however, the more convinced Joe became that it wasn’t themselves they were hearing. He could see the distant glisten of auras up ahead, and he broke into a light jog, ignoring the leaves and branches hitting his face, so much harder to see and dodge without his usual eyesight.

                It was a shock to Joe when, after a minute of running, he felt a hand fly out and hit him across the chest way too hard, holding him back.

                “Ow, dude, what the-” Joe began, before a hand was clamped over his mouth. Patrick pointed, to Joe’s surprise, up, and Joe followed his line of sight with trepidation, hearing the huffs and snorts of a very large animal breathing.

                A dragon.

                The first thing Joe felt was awe. Deadly or not (and it was definitely deadly) how could he not be in awe? Perched atop a tree branch, the thing was at least twenty feet tall with smoky colored gray and white scales, like marble, and slitted amber eyes. Fearsome, of course, but it was also strangely beautiful. Its claws curled around the branch were larger than Patrick’s knives, and with every snort, a puff of smoke came out of its snout.

                “No fucking way,” Pete whispered. The dragon snorted, smoke and sparks flying up into the sky. Its scales glistened in the afternoon sun, and it suddenly stretched, extending leathery gray wings out in either direction.

                The dragon tilted its head back, and Joe heard a loud crunching noise. He looked closer at the dragon’s mouth and saw something charred black hanging out from the edge of its mouth. He leaned in slightly, trying to get closer still, and he realized there was a shoe on the end of it. It was chewing a human leg.

                Joe felt faint.

                Once the initial awe passed, Joe felt overwhelmed with fear. It was working over a human body in its mouth, chewing slowly and deliberately, and more than that, it wasn’t eating it for nourishment. Joe wasn’t 100% sure how he could tell, but he saw the aura shimmering around it, pure red, as though the dragon itself were on fire, but it wasn’t the red of pain or shock. It was the same color that surrounded the whole burnt area from earlier: anger. The dragon was killing because it liked it.

                They needed to leave, needed to get out of there immediately, but Joe was fixated on the dragon, on the way it moved and glistened like gold, the sun reflecting rainbows off of the white scales. Super strength or no, Joe knew for a fact that he didn’t stand a chance against that thing.

                The dragon shuddered, stretched out its wings again, and took off skyward, its wings beating down with such force that Joe nearly fell over backwards from the wind against him. He watched the dragon rise higher and higher into the air, and then, with a wisp of black smoke, it disappeared.

                They were all silent for a moment.

                “Okay,” Patrick said. “What the fuck?”

                “That was a dragon,” Joe said faintly.

                “That’s not possible,” Pete said firmly. “Dragons aren’t real.”

                “Look, dude, we all know you’re excited to be able to lie for once, but that was a fucking dragon,” Joe said. “Like. Straight up Eragon shit, but he didn’t look friendly as Saphira.”

                “But that isn’t possible!” Pete insisted. Andy somehow managed to look exasperated, even as a wolf.

                Pete’s phone started ringing, and he grabbed it, answering before he could even think.

                “Hello? No- yes, I’m still Pete,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Have you found anything out yet?” His eyebrows turned down, and he groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Today? Now? We have bigger problems, Dan!” he yelled. “Yeah, fine, Jesus. We’ll go. But we need you to do something for us too,” Pete paused, and looked at the other guys, biting down hard on his lip. “Yeah, uh huh, can you research dragons for us? Because we saw one. No, I’m not fucking with you. Yeah? Great.”

                Pete hung up, and sighed for a long time.

                “So we’ve got an interview.”

                Joe talked Andy through turning back, pleading with him to go on instinct, to turn as fast as possible, like he had the first time. He didn’t know how auras worked still, but he’d heard Pete talk about manipulation enough to have some idea. He tried to will confidence over to Andy, and he wasn’t sure if he did it, but Andy managed to turn back with minimal pain, getting dressed fairly quickly after that.

                The four of them argued the whole way back to the venue. Andy seemed to think they had to go after the dragon right then, as soon as was physically possible, but thankfully, it seemed that everyone else was on the same page. They had no idea how to fight a dragon, and they couldn’t all mysteriously come down with the flu. Andy was adamant, however.

                “It killed that guy and then came back to eat him later, after it had already burnt him alive. Why the hell would it do that? Is it just sadistic?”

                “Isn’t that part of dragon mythology?” Patrick asked. “Dragons cook their meat before they eat it and that puts them on par with humans? Somehow? I think I read that.”

                “But that’s mythology!” Pete insisted. “I don’t even think cooked meat would be good for reptiles, like, from an evolutionary standpoint.”

                “Are dragons reptiles?” Joe asked.

                “PEOPLE ARE DYING!” Andy yelled.

                They were all upset with each other and already in a bad mood when they got to the interview, and Joe could tell almost immediately that the interview wasn’t going to go well. The snarky interviewer was definitely not a fan of Fall Out Boy, but he had also done his research.

                “So, you take up a lot of tour buses for a supposedly environmentally friendly band,” he said, staring down Patrick in Andy’s body.

                “That wasn’t a question,” Patrick said, sliding his glasses up his nose.

                “How do you think your weight issues negatively affect your singing?” he asked Pete in Patrick’s body.

                “Well, it can’t be affecting me that much, given that I’m much more successful than you are,” Pete said, his hands clenched.

                “About the pictures of you that were released,” he turned to Joe later in the interview, and Joe, at the end of his rope and unable to lie, simply walked out of the interview. The interviewer hadn’t asked Andy anything at all.

                It wasn’t like they didn’t know what the others went through, Joe thought miserably. But it was definitely more evident when he _was_ Pete, his chest constricting as he half-expected to be met with glossy eight-by-tens of Pete’s dick. And maybe there was some private part of him that thought it would be nice to be Pete, but if there had been, there wasn’t anymore. He just wanted to go outside, maybe smoke and breathe for a second, but he knew that even if he weren’t met by fans, someone would recognize him, feel the need to say something.

                “Hey, um, Pete?” he heard the real Pete call. Joe turned still smoldering, and Pete gave him a sympathetic look. “We ended up throwing the tool out. He just works for his college newspaper, so, you know,” he shrugged. “No harm done. Don’t even think management’ll be too pissed.”

                “Thanks,” Joe said, but he still felt empty. Though he didn’t want to say anything else, the words bubbled up from inside of him like acid, willing him to tell the whole truth. Damn fae physiology. “You get that a lot, huh?”

                “All part of the glamorous rockstar life,” Pete said. He had put on a looser jacket, even though it was hot out. Joe pulled a face.

                “Dude, you can’t feel self-conscious about someone else,” he said, pointing at the jacket.

                “And yet,” Pete said, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s weird. He looks fine to me, but it’s different here. I’ve got no damn idea why.”

                “Well, you’ve got to beware of mirrors, right?” Joe laughed, and Pete frowned. “Wait, shit, what did I say?”

                “Say for a second dragons are real,” Pete said, moving in closer to him. “Why did it disappear like that? Don’t you think it’s a little strange?”

                “I think we’re long past a little strange,” Joe said, “But you’ve got a point. What are you thinking?”

                “Just thinking about mirrors,” Pete said. His hands were clenched again. “And that it’s no coincidence that a dragon showed up this close to us, of all people.”

                “Hell, dude, I stopped believing in coincidences long ago,” Joe said darkly. “Somebody is definitely trying to fuck with us today.”

                “Hey, are we missing out on all the Peterick action?” Gabe asked. He and Bill had wandered over, and Joe tried to school himself back into Pete mode. _What would Pete do? What would Pete do?_

                “You know it,” Pete said before he could, kissing Joe sloppy and wet on the mouth. Joe shoved him off, then, thinking better of it, liked the side of his face for good measure. Gabe cackled, but Bill’s eyes narrowed.

                “So what have the vigilantes been up to today?” Gabe asked.

                “I thought you didn’t want to be involved in the crime fighting business,” Joe said.

                “Doesn’t mean I’m not curious,” Gabe said. “Besides, keeping secrets from Mark Hoppus is one thing, but you can trust us.”

                Leaving +44 out of all of the magic was strange, Joe knew, but apparently they were notorious in the music industry for being completely blind to magic. He smirked, shrugging once.

                “Know anything about dragons?” he asked. Gabe frowned.

                “Dragons? But dragons aren’t real,” he said.

                “Oh for fuck’s sake, you turn into a snake!” Joe cried. Gabe opened his mouth to argue, but Bill tugged at his sleeve.

                “We actually have to go talk about something private, but we’ll see you guys at the show tonight, yeah?” Bill said, and he dragged Gabe off before they could answer.

                “Weird,” Joe decided. “Anyway, there’s probably not time to do much dragon hunting before the show, but there is time to call Ryan, see if he’s up for some more research.”

                “I think he’s actually supposed to be working on songwriting right now,” Pete said.

                “Yeah, look, I can’t be sarcastic properly in your body, so I’m gonna come right out and say I think the odds are much better that he’s getting high and trying to have an orgy right now, so he can stand to do a little work,” Joe said. “So you call the little scamp and I’ll practice bass so that we don’t totally suck tonight.”

                Joe tried to swallow his fears about the concert later, but something about Pete’s body made fear a lot stickier and harder to swallow. He considered just seeing if weed would have some effect on the anxiety, but he wasn’t sure how good of an idea that was before going onstage. At some point while the minutes drained away, much too fast, a woman came up to him and helped him put on eyeliner. He felt like he was much too pale and chalky in the mirror as his hair got straightened again, and he changed into better clothes. His hands shook so hard he could hardly zip up his hoodie. Stage fright, this far in, was ridiculous, he told himself, but logic wasn’t doing much for him all of a sudden.

                “You good?” Patrick asked. Joe glanced up at him, nodding a few times too many. Patrick squeezed his shoulder, and the physical contact felt immediately calming. No wonder Pete was in love with him, he thought offhandedly.

                “Showtime,” Patrick said, and they all, minus Andy, went to stand in place for the toasters to shoot them up onto the stage. Funny, but even in Pete’s body, Joe wasn’t looking forward to getting launched onto stage.

                Joe was disoriented as he was thrown onto the stage, and almost started running to his usual space before he saw the tech. Right.

                Being Pete involved a hell of a lot more talking to the crowd. Also, his hair was in his damn eyes, which helped in making it harder to see the crowd, but was still a pain in the ass. He supposed he ought to go drape himself all over Pete, throw himself around the stage and smolder into the cameras, or whatever the hell Pete did onstage, but it was enough, he decided, to keep his voice from trembling when he delivered the “diamonds in the sky” speech as best he could from memory. Pete gave him a look that said he butchered it, but hell, he played fine, and they were focusing on music first, weren’t they?

                Joe always expected this to be more exhilarating than terrifying, but by the time they finished throwing picks into the audience after _Saturday_ , he was just relieved to be sitting down, his legs quivering underneath him like jello.

                “Tell me we’re gonna fix this before tomorrow?” he pleaded. Andy looked up from the comic he was reading with a half-hearted shrug, but Patrick was beaming.

                “That was awesome,” he said, his smile only faltering when the others stared at him. “What? I had fun.”

                “Glad somebody did,” Pete said. “Anyway, are you 100% sure about the shower thing? Because I look and feel like I just stepped out of a goddamn swimming pool,” he said, wringing sweat out of his hat for emphasis. Patrick glared at him.

                “Suck it up, buttercup,” Patrick said. “At least you don’t smell gross.”

                “Oh yes I do,” Pete said. “You’re kidding, right?”

                “You smell fantastic, Pete, just change your clothes,” Patrick said, looking confused. Joe gave him a look, because Patrick smelled pretty much the same as always. Andy snorted.

                “What?” Patrick asked. Andy turned the page, smirking.

                “You’re thirsty,” he said. Patrick flushed immediately.

                “I’m what?” he asked.

                “You’re thirsty,” Andy said, barely holding back laughter. “That’s the only reason he smells good to you.”

                Patrick looked mortified.

                “Dude,” Joe said, shaking his head. “You want to drink your own blood?”

                “Ugh!” Patrick groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Never mind, just go shower and get it over with, Christ.”

                “I’m gonna go get a towel,” Pete laughed as he headed off to the showers, and Joe started laughing too.

                “I’ve changed my mind, this was totally worth it,” he said, shaking his head. “We can stay like this. Andy, I’ll teach you how to play guitar. This is amazing.”

                “You’re a dick!” Patrick groaned. “Oh, when I get my body back and it’s a fair fight…”

                “Guys?” Joe stifled his laughter as he looked up. Gabe and Bill were standing in the doorway to the Fall Out Boy dressing room, looking nervous and guilty. Bill was speaking, his face full of chagrin. “Listen, there’s something we have to talk about.”

                “It can wait,” Pete said, pushing past them as he walked back into the room, all traces of humor gone from his face. “Guys? We have a bit of a dragon problem.”

***

                Patrick was having trouble seeing the downside of his situation. He got to drum, he could see like he’d never seen before, hear like he’d never heard before. He could smell everything, and he felt a crazy amount of power coursing through his veins. Running in the woods earlier felt like flying, like having sex or writing music. Bloodlust was, in his opinion, a very small price to pay for what was doubtlessly the coolest experience of his life. The only thing that had been missing was the chance to fight, and it looked like it was coming up. Huge or not, a dragon didn’t seem that scary compared to him right then. Patrick felt indestructible.

                Patrick pushed past Gabe and Bill, trying to use as little force as possible because he didn’t know his own strength. He wanted to take off running immediately, but he was hindered by Pete. Jesus, was he always this slow? How did Andy deal with it all the time?

                “What happened?” he asked impatiently. He inhaled sharply, and quickly regretted it. Pete smelled really, really good, and thirst flared up in his throat that he did his best to ignore.

                “I heard screaming and saw smoke. Rick, we might be too late,” Pete said urgently. Patrick cocked his head slightly, and heard, if he payed very close attention, what sounded like distant pleading, far beyond the walls of the venue and the din of the crowd.

                “She’s still alive,” Patrick said. He glanced at Pete nervously. No wonder the other guys worried about him so much- he was practically a walking target. “She might not have much time though. I’m gonna run ahead, you guys follow me, okay?”

                “Are you stupid? I’m not going to let you do that!” Pete yelled.

Patrick couldn’t help grinning before he said, “Try and stop me,” and took off running.

                This, he decided, was exactly what that body was built for.

                Even given the severity of the situation, Patrick couldn’t help but grinning with the thrill of running. Since he was a kid, running had been an ordeal, tag was never fun. Now? It felt as free as flying. He shouldn’t have been able to hear anything but wind and the roar of his heartbeat in his ears, but he could hear, very distantly, a girl trying to run, not nearly as fast as him, tripping over roots and cursing.

                Seeing even better in the dark than he could in daylight, Patrick was upon her in no time, catching her as she fell again, holding her up. His heart thudded hard as he saw her properly. She looked young, barely in high school, her long hair tangled and makeup running down her face.

                “Hey,” he said, helping her up. “What happened?”

                “There’s- there’s-!” she panted, pointed behind her. “There’s something in there!”

                “A dragon?” Patrick guessed.

                “Are you Andy Hurley?” she asked.

                “Was it a dragon?” he asked again.

                “Oh my god, you’re Andy Hurley,” she whispered. “I’m a huge fan!”

                “Is now the time?” Patrick shouted. A roar came from behind them, and the forest lit up orange as a wall of fire barrelled towards them. Patrick dragged the girl to the side, just out of the flames’ reach, then grabbed her hand and started running, much too slow for his taste.

                “What happened?” he asked, but she couldn’t catch her breath as they ran. Patrick felt wind buffet him from behind and with a groan, he scooped the girl up into his arms and sprinted out of the woods, feeling heat scorching him from behind with another roar.

                “Oh, man, I hope it rains tonight,” Patrick muttered.

                Patrick ran the girl out into the middle of the field, setting her down on unsteady feet once they were a decent distance from the woods. He looked behind him, but other than a few trails of gray smoke rising up into the night, he couldn’t see any signs of the dragon.

                “What happened?” he asked, brushing her hair back. She looked dazed.

                “Patrick!” Pete screamed, and Patrick turned to see the three of them running towards him.

                “Why are they calling you Patrick, Andy?” she asked.

                “It’s a long story,” Patrick said. “What happened to you?”

                “I felt sick during the concert,” she said. “I went outside to just get some air and I thought I saw a fire in the forest…”

                “And you went to check it out?” Patrick asked. She looked embarrassed, but Patrick had to admire the courage.

                “I don’t understand,” she said. “It was a dragon. I didn’t think they were real.”

                “Neither did we,” Patrick said. He brushed her hair back and smiled at her. “Did you come here with friends?” he asked, and she nodded.

                “You should go find them. The concert’s over and they’ll be worried about you,” he said, and jerked his head back towards the venue. The girl nodded, and waved once before walking away.

                “You could have gotten yourself killed!” Andy burst out as soon as the girl was out of earshot. “You could have gotten me killed! What were you thinking?”

                “Thanks for the concern,” Patrick said, but he felt a twinge of guilt. He hadn’t even thought about this being Andy’s body. “I just wanted to get her out of there.”

                “Dragon still in there?” Joe asked, glancing over at the forest. Patrick nodded. Joe tossed him a knife that Patrick caught by the handle with unexpected reflexes. “Let’s go.”

                “Now?” Pete asked. Joe nodded.

                “Let’s end this,” he said.

                The four of them started walking towards the forest, Patrick’s heart high up in his throat and pounding hard. Indestructible or not, it felt good to be holding his own weapon.

                Patrick stopped mid-step on their way to the trees, hearing an unnaturally strong rustling.

                “Did you hear that?” he asked, Joe opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, a huge shape burst from the trees, a shadow flying directly at them.

                “SHIT!” Patrick yelled. His first instinct was to duck down, but he realized that the dragon wasn’t flying towards them: it looked like it was going to fly over them. At the last second, rather than diving down, Patrick jumped up, holding his knife above him, and he felt it meet its target, digging into something meaty and spilling blood down on his head. Patrick was lifted a foot off the ground before the knife slid out and he fell to the ground. The dragon roared, swooping in a circle and turning back on them, its yellow slitted eyes full of wrath as it turned on Patrick.

                Adrenaline raced through Patrick as the dragon flew back towards him. It looked as though it were going to fly right over him again, but at the last second, its claws stretched out to grab at Patrick. Panicked, Patrick sliced his knife through the darkness, cutting through one of the claws and earning another enraged roar from the dragon.

                “What the hell are you doing, trying to get us killed?” Joe yelled.

                “I’m handling it!” Patrick screamed back. The dragon turned again and released a great jet of fire right at them, and the four of them dived in different directions to avoid it. Patrick felt the heat rush past his face, and he jumped to his feet as soon as it passed.

                The dragon reared to attack again, and Patrick held his ground. It was still bleeding, but Patrick realized that all the damage he had done had only torn out some of its scales. It didn’t look particularly injured. It just looked angry.

                Patrick positioned himself to strike again, but this time the dragon flew at him jaws first. It was almost upon him when Joe jumped in front of him, gun raised.

                Joe shot with a burst of sparks coming from the gun, Patrick thought it would hit its mark, hopefully somewhere around the dragon’s soft palate, but instead, with a huge burst of black smoke, the dragon was gone, disappeared without a trace.

                Patrick’s chest heaved as he stared at the spot where the dragon had been, his knife still dark and slick with blood. His legs shook underneath him, and it took a second before he could find his voice.

                “I don't remember any stories about dragons being able to do that,” he said weakly.

                “Fuck,” Pete said. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded suddenly, turning on Patrick.

                “We had to do something!” Patrick yelled. Joe glared at him, and Patrick wondered if fae could tell when he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

                “Look-” he began to explain, but he instead looked over Pete’s shoulder to where two figures were running up towards them.

                “There you are!” Gabe yelled. “Where have you been?”

                “Dragon problem,” Andy said, rubbing his temples. “What do you want?”

                Bill and Gabe paused, then looked at each other guiltily before turning back.

                “Are you perhaps… not feeling quite yourselves?” Bill asked delicately. Patrick’s eyes narrowed.

                “Why?” he asked, crossing his arms.

                “Answer the question?” Gabe pleaded.

                “Why?” Joe asked, his voice low.

                “We think- we were trying to do it to ourselves, you know, just for fun, but the spell didn’t work, only we think it might have worked on you guys instead of us,” Bill said, chewing on his lip.

                “Was it, by any chance, a body swap spell?” Pete asked, his voice thin.

                “That’d be it, yeah,” Gabe said. “Bill saw that your auras were… off.”

                Patrick stared for a second, and after a beat, Joe lashed out.

                “You body swapped us?!” he screamed.

                “We were trying to do it to ourselves!” Bill pleaded, holding his hands up.

                “WHY?” Joe yelled.

                Even in the dark, Patrick could see both of them flush bright red.

                “Recreational purposes,” Gabe said at last. “Who’s who in there?”

                “I’m Patrick,” Patrick said wearily. “That’s Joe, Andy, Pete,” he pointed at each of them in turn. “So, you’re going to put us back, right?”

                “YES,” Gabe said fervently. “Just come back to my bus, okay? We’re both really, really sorry about this.”

                “But while we have you, were there any negative side effects? Dizziness? Nausea?” Bill asked.

                “Unbelievable,” Andy muttered.

                The six of them made it all the way back to the Cobra Starship bus before Patrick realized that there were two girls standing in front of his and Andy’s bus. He frowned, just able to make out with Andy’s excellent night vision that they looked like they’d been crying.

                “Wait here a minute?” he said quietly, possibly going unheard under all of Joe’s berating Gabe and Bill. he jogged over to the bus, frowning at the girls standing there.

                “You aren’t allowed to be back here,” he said, not unkindly. One of the girls sniffled, and the other took his hand.

                “Andy, right?” she said. Patrick didn’t bother correcting her. “Listen- we, that is, I’ve done something bad. Really bad. And I need to talk to your band about it.”

                “What kind of bad thing?” Patrick asked. The girl was quiet for a long time.

                “Have you seen a dragon recently?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, y'all! Taking 18 credit hours this semester was a great idea, but it does get hectic. Anywho, I hope you enjoyed, and now we are officially into the thick of the plot! You can send in questions anytime on the tumblr, or here, and thanks as always for reading!
> 
> Chapter Title by Death Cab for Cutie


	9. My Way Home Is THrough You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things on the Honda Civic Tour begin heating up (literally) as the boys meet two girls that made a terrible mistake with the goal of meeting their favorite band, and Pete introduces his friends to a long lost family member.

                “Why don’t you start from the beginning, yeah?” Patrick suggested. All four of the band had piled around the dining table in his and Andy’s bus, along with the two strange girls. Gabe and Bill bustled around the kitchen, dragging things out of cupboards and muttering to each other.

                The four of them were still stuck in each other’s bodies, but Patrick felt comfortable in Andy. The shorter girl with curly hair fidgeted, biting her nails nervously.

                “How about your names?” Pete suggested after a moment.

                “My name is Atalia,” the taller girl said, tossing her hair back. Her voice was strong and rough, and she gestured to the girl next to her. “This is Sola. Sola, do you want to tell them why we’re here?” She spoke gently, almost maternally, and tears sprung to Sola’s eyes again.

                “Shit, shit, add some water to that, we don’t wanna choke them,” Bill said in a hushed tone from the kitchen.

                “It’s… it’s sort of a long story,” Sola hedged. She had a Spanish accent, but her English seemed fine, other than choking on the words from emotion.

                “It has to do with the dragon?” Patrick prompted.

                “SHIT!” Gabe yelled. An unearthly wail escaped the glass he was holding, and Patrick shook his head, cringing.

                “Wha- what are they doing?” Sola asked, sniffling slightly.

                “You first,” Joe said. Patrick could only imagine how confusing it was for them to meet Fall Out Boy acting not at all like Fall Out Boy, but the dragon issue seemed time sensitive.

                “The dragon is… it’s my fault,” Sola said, her words barely audible, to the point Patrick doubted if Pete would be able to hear them in his body. Her eyes brimmed with tears again. “But I didn’t mean to, I swear, I never meant to hurt anyone!”

                “How is the dragon your fault?” Pete asked, reaching out and running a thumb over one of her hands. Sola inhaled gently and closed her eyes.

                “I sold my soul to see you in concert,” she said all in one breath.

                There was a long silence.

                The sound of glass shattering came from the kitchenette, and Patrick’s head snapped up. “ _Sorry_ ,” Bill mouthed, and he knelt to start sweeping it up.

                “You sold your soul?” Joe asked.

                Sola nodded.

                “To see Fall Out Boy?” Joe continued.

                Sola nodded again, fervently.

                “ _What?_ ” he asked, eyes bugging out wildly, eyeliner smeared all over.

                “I just- you _never_ come to Central America and we’ve been waiting so long to see you and I didn’t want to die before I met you or something and in my defense, I didn’t think it was going to work,” she said.

                “How did you even go about selling your soul? Who did you sell it to? What does it have to do with the dragon?” Pete asked, looking only slightly less scandalized than Joe did.

                “It was sort of a joke,” Sola said, still looking rather faint, but no longer crying. “I was having some friends over and we were all talking about how badly we wanted to see you- you know, listening to music and just sort of commiserating. And somebody- well, somebody made a _joke_ about selling their soul, and, I mean, we had nothing better to do, so I tried. I didn’t think it was going to work!” she said.

                “You sold your soul,” Patrick said, his eyes huge. “How did you figure out how to do that?”

                “We just looked it up online,” Atalia said with a shrug. “It wasn’t like it was hard. Chanting, candles, a dark room with a mirror, basic stuff.”

                “A mirror?” Pete asked sharply.

                “You figured out how to summon a demon to sell your soul to on the internet?” Joe asked.

                “Yes,” Sola said fervently. “We did a google search. It wasn’t a big thing. And, like I said, we thought it wouldn’t work. You know, we thought it would be a kid’s game. Like Bloody Mary, you know, just made up.”

                “Don’t I wish?” Joe muttered, too low for them to hear.

                “So, when a demon actually showed up and asked what I wanted, I was really shocked, yeah? So I just told him the truth. I wanted to see you guys in concert,” she blushed, a deep, bronze red against her skin, ducking her head down. “And then- well, I guess you don’t need the whole story.”

                “Trust me, we do,” Andy said, “Don’t leave anything out, okay?”

                “Okay,” Sola took a deep breath. Patrick tried to give her an encouraging smile, and she nodded. “We didn’t actually see him, you know. It was dark, and we did it in the bathroom with candles, but all of a sudden it got really warm and all the candles went out. There was a pair of eyes in the mirror, we could see because they were, like, glowing,” she said, looking frightened.

                “What color?” Pete asked.

                “What?” Sola asked.

                “The eyes. What color were they?”

                “Um, gold,” she said, frowning at him. “And, um, we heard a voice. Well, we sort of heard a voice, but it was more just in our heads? I’m not sure if that makes sense, but, anyway, he said he’d been summoned and he asked what I wanted, so I told him the truth. I wanted to go to a Fall Out Boy concert. And then… then he laughed at me. Told me that he didn’t give out favors idly, and that I ought to think of something bigger if I really wanted to go through with this.”

                She paused.

                “I didn’t have to,” she whispered. “He told me that I could leave. Turn on a light and make him disappear and never think of it again. But I didn’t want to stop. I don’t know why, I guess I just wasn’t thinking clearly.

                “I didn’t actually come up with the terms. He did. He suggested not just a show, but the entire tour. A pit ticket to every show, a hotel room and transportation every night, getting a chance to meet the band… you guys, every night. And then at the end of the tour, he said that one of his… servants, he said, would take me. Kill me, I guess, but he said take. And he said my soul would be his. And I don’t know why, but I said yes.”

                “That doesn’t quite explain the dragon,” Andy said gently.

                “That’s my fault, I think,” Atalia said. She didn’t look teary, as Sola had, but she was very pale.

                “FUCK!” Gabe yelled. Patrick jumped at the sudden noise, not having realized how quietly they were all talking. He turned around, and Gabe winced.

                “Sorry,” he said, quieter. “Do you have any witch hazel?”

                “Check the bathroom,” Patrick said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. Gabe nodded and rushed behind them, made a decent bit of noise rummaging around and knocking everything over, then returned triumphantly with a plastic bottle in his hand.

                “What are they doing?” Sola asked.

                “We’ll explain later,” Patrick said. “Atalia- am I saying that right?”

                “Yes,” Atalia said with a humorless smile. “I followed Sola to the first show. Did a lot of hitchhiking, but I was going to come with her no matter what. I thought she was going to die, so I had to come. I had to be here to say goodbye.” She didn’t look emotional, though Sola seemed close to tears again. Atalia was hard, closed off, and her eyes were steely. “She’s my best friend. And I also wanted to figure out how to fix this, if there was a way.”

                “I figured there would be no harm in sneaking her into my hotel room,” Sola whispered. “Even if she couldn’t come see the shows, surely she could stay with me. We thought we were getting away with it, but then last night-” her voice cracked.

                “The lights went out when we were in the bathroom,” Atalia said, and Patrick felt a wave of foreboding run through him. “And we heard him talking again. He said that since she hadn’t obeyed the rules set up, he didn’t have to either. If she was going to take more, he was going to take more.

                “He said that on the last night of the tour, the dragon would take everyone. Kill everyone, that is,” she finished, still tense all over.

                “Everyone?” Patrick asked faintly.

                “Well, the whole crowd,” Atalia said. “He didn’t mention the bands or the workers or anything, but the 10,000 or so people that come to see you.”

                “Every single person that comes out to see us on the last night of the tour?” Pete asked, looking ghastly pale in Patrick’s body.

                “Yes,” Sola whispered. “I don’t know how you can help us but- but you have to. Cancel the tour, evacuate the place, do _something_. I’m sorry, I am, and you can hate me if you want, but everyone doesn’t deserve to die.”

                They sat in silence for just a second before Gabe slammed a shot glass down in front of Patrick. Patrick jolted up again to see him putting down shots in front of the other members of his band, and Bill pouring something glittery and smoking into each glass.

                “You’re all gonna have to drink that at the same time,” Bill advised. Patrick glanced over at the others, and they all picked up the glasses, throwing back the liquid. It burned Patrick’s throat as it went down, singeing more like fire than like alcohol, but he resisted the urge to cough or spit it out. His eyes were streaming in pain, and he closed them quickly.

                All at once, it was as though his senses were muffled, like someone had shoved a pillow over his head and he was hearing the world underwater. He opened his eyes and found his eyesight disappointing behind glass once again. He experimentally stretched a hand out in front of him, a hand that looked pudgy and familiar, even if it was slightly unwanted. He sighed.

                “Luckily for you, I think we can do you one better,” Patrick said, stretching.

                “You can?” Sola asked, eyes wide and disbelieving.

                “Joe?” Patrick asked. With a smirk, Joe’s shoulders hunched forward and he shifted, pulling his lips back into a snarl as soon as he was in wolf form.

                Sola shrieked, but Atalia’s eyes just widened, blinking rapidly as she stared down at Joe.

                “We actually have a bit of experience dealing with demons,” Pete said, letting his eyes flash just once. Sola looked faint.

                “And we’re gonna get rid of this dragon,” Patrick said, smiling confidently. He put a hand on Sola’s giving her another reassuring smile. “You don’t deserve to die either.”

                Sola, for the first time since he met her, smiled a genuine, if still nervous smile.

                “So did it work, or what?” Bill asked.

                “Yeah, it worked,” Joe said, human again. “Never do that again, assholes.”

                “Dude, that’s awesome. This’ll come in handy later,” Gabe said, grinning.

                “Now get off our bus, we’re busy,” Joe ordered. The two of them waved as they left, letting the door slam behind them. Joe put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples, taking deep breaths.

                “I’m gonna go smoke for a second, don’t talk about anything important while I’m gone,” he ordered, heaving himself out from behind the table and slouching outside.

                “What did happen, anyway?” Atalia asked.

                “Minor bodyswap incident, nothing to be alarmed by,” Andy said. “Oh well. At least our enemies keep giving us deadlines so we have time to set up. It’s so courteous of them.”

                “Maybe the bad guys need time to set their plans into place too,” Pete suggested. He looked tense still, his knuckles stark against the table, and Patrick rubbed the back of his hand once. Pete glanced up at him, confused, and then edged a little closer to him until they were leaning against each other. Patrick could practically feel the anxiety radiating off of him, and it didn’t take much to figure out why.

                “What was the name of the demon?” Patrick asked. Sola winced.

                “I’m not supposed to say his name,” she said. “Not unless I’m calling him. They say saying his name invokes his presence. That’s how we got him to show up the first time, anyway.”

                “Yeah, demon names do that. Even the lesser demons. But I think I know who you’re talking about,” Pete said, sighing heavily. “Of course he’s not destroying the bands.” He ran a hand through his hair, messier than usual. “Okay. We’ve got time on our side, at least.”

                “We’ve only got months,” Atalia said. “And how do you plan on defeating a demon?” she asked.

                “Don’t be ridiculous, we’re not killing a demon, we’re killing a dragon. Much simpler,” Pete said.

                “They make flame retardant material for, like, firefighters,” Andy said softly. Pete pointed to him, nodding.

                “Yeah, they do, so we’ll get that. We can make ourselves some matching fireproof jumpsuits like we’re the goddamn Ghostbusters and then, I don’t know, maybe a grenade launcher or something. Not everything has to be all magical bullshit.” He sounded exhausted and looked like he had aged ten years. “But we’d better get on it, if it’s already killing people. Unless of course someone just wants our attention.”

                “Why would he want your attention?” Sola asked. “He’s after me.”

                “Yeah, but he’s also my dad,” Pete said, rolling his eyes. He was making a serious effort to look nonchalant in front of the girls, but Patrick could see how scared he looked behind the facade. “So now it’s extra personal.”

                The girls looked disbelieving.

                “Your dad is a demon? Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the second? The lawyer? The political protest one?” Sola asked.

                “It’s still kinda creepy when fans do that,” Andy said quietly.

                “My other dad,” Pete said with a sigh. “It’s sort of complicated.”

                “Like you said, we’ve got a few months,” Atalia said. Pete groaned.

                “Typical love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Boy is human, girl is angel. Girl wants to become human so she can die with boy, girl makes a deal with a demon and gives birth to his kid. The usual.”

                “Did I miss anything important?” Joe asked, walking back in. He looked slightly more awake, but still ashen faced with exhaustion.

                “Just a family history lesson,” Pete said. “But the next step is research.”

                “Wrong,” Joe said. “Next step is sleep. We can figure out what we’re doing tomorrow. You guys should stay with us,” he said to the girls. Both of them looked suddenly terrified.

                “With you?” Sola’s voice squeaked a little.

                “Yeah, it’s safer,” Joe said, either oblivious to the reaction or ignoring it, Patrick couldn’t tell which. “In case your demon friend decides that he’s changed his mind again and you need to be taken out of the equation early. You wanna stay on Patrick and Andy’s bus or mine and Pete’s?”

                “Huh?” Atalia asked, face pale.

                “It’s up to you. Patrick and Andy’s is a goddamn mess and there’ll be a toddler living there soon, but Pete’s and mine smells like a frat house,” Joe said.

                “We’ll stay with you guys,” Sola said quickly, and Pete bit his lip and looked down like he was just barely holding back laughter. He probably saw the desperately in love vibes in her aura, but Patrick could see it just as plainly on her face when she looked at Pete.

                “You have all your stuff with you?” Joe asked.

                “Uh-huh,” the two of them nodded almost in unison.

                “Great,” Joe said. “Let’s go the fuck to bed. We’ve got a dragon to start hunting tomorrow.”

                Taking it as their cue to leave, Joe and Pete got up from the table, motioning for Sola and Atalia to come with them.

                “’Night,” Pete said, giving Patrick a strangely shy looking wave as he left, and once the four of them were gone, Patrick let out a long moan and slumped in his seat.

                “Never a boring moment,” he sighed to himself.

                “Not in this band,” Andy agreed. He glanced up at Patrick and winced.

                “Any chance…?” Andy began, and Patrick nodded, dragging himself up as well. The simple act of walking to the kitchen made him almost want to cry. It was, in many ways, good to be back in his own body. He liked having full autonomy, he liked the idea of being able to shower and no one else being able to look at his dick. At the same time, he missed the speed, the grace, the strength that came with temporary vampirism. He wanted to feel powerful again, wanted to be the one protecting rather than be the one getting protected. He wanted to be a vampire, not a juicebox.

                Patrick pulled a lancet out of the top drawer in the kitchenette while Andy got the tomato juice out of the fridge. He rolled the cuff of his jeans up to his knee and drew a few drops of blood out of his leg, letting them drip into the cup before Andy microwaved it. It didn’t hurt badly, giving blood, but it was enough of a pain that he didn’t want to do it anywhere on his hands or arms, just in case it negatively impacted guitar playing. _Weak_ , a tiny voice in the back of his head thought.

                Andy was blowing on the mug of tomato juice and blood with a thermometer from the medicine cabinet stuck in it, trying to get it to cool to a balmy 98.7. He looked thirsty but peaceful, like anyone would right before they had a good meal. The words burbled out of Patrick’s mouth before he could stop them.

                “Do you think you could turn anyone? Hypothetically?” Patrick asked, wishing as soon as he spoke that he hadn’t.

                Andy stopped blowing on the liquid and instead frowned at Patrick. His eyebrows pulled together and his lips thinned, making a huge production out of being disapproving.

                “Why?”

                “Hypothetically.”

                “Doubt it,” Andy said. He stirred the mixture with the thermometer. “People get turned by blood exchange. I’d have to drink their blood till they were at the brink of death, and then they’d have to drink a decent amount of my blood too, but I’m not a full vampire, so I don’t think it would work,” he said. He gave Patrick a piercing look. “Lots of people would kill to be human.”

                “Thanks, mom, I know there are starving kids in Africa,” Patrick snapped back. “It was a hypothetical question.”

                “It doesn’t work like that. At least, we don’t know if it works like that. And I don’t want to test it on you only to find out I fucking killed you,” Andy said.

                “Forget it,” Patrick groaned, closing his eyes. “Forget I ever asked.”

                He thought Andy was going to press the issue, but, mercifully, he backed off.

                “Fine,” Andy said. “You should get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

                He gave Patrick a tight smile as he walked back to the bunks, a trickle of crimson dripping down from the corner of his lips.

***

                The Quad Cities were bright and sunny when the buses pulled in early the next day. The hot, humid air, the bright sun, and the vast swaths of open grass served only to remind Joe of another summer day, in another lifetime, training the guys in My Chemical Romance how to fight. This time, though, they weren’t even training. They were strategizing.

                After persuading security with a little help from charmspeak, Pete had obtained a golf cart for them, and they’d piled the six of them in and left the venue in the dust. It was a short drive to the cemetery, and the cemetery was quiet and spacious. Of course, the cemetery also brought back fond memories of My Chemical Romance, and Joe grinned distantly at the memory.

                “Happy thoughts?” Pete guessed.

                “Just reminiscing,” Joe said. “How’s Mikey and everyone doing these days?” he asked.

                “Haven’t heard from him much recently, actually,” Pete said. “He was sick for a while, but I’m sure he’s better now.”

                “Mmm,” Joe hummed.

                “So what’s the plan?” Sola asked eagerly. She looked much better after sleeping and eating breakfast with them, although she also looked a lot younger.

                “First, research,” Pete said. “What else can you tell us?” he asked.

                “That’s the whole story,” Atalia said defensively.

                “Nothing else about the demon?” Pete asked. “What did his voice sound like?”

                “I mean, it was kind of a hot voice,” Atalia said. Sola shrugged in agreement.

                “A hot voice?” Joe asked.

                “Yeah, like, how some guys have attractive voices? He sounded like a hot actor, but, like, kind of rough? It sounded attractive, but it also sounded like smoke,” Atalia said.

                “The room smelled weird when he talked to us,” Sola added.

                “What did it smell like?” Pete prompted.

                “Like rust.”

                “Like blood.”

                “Good to know,” Pete said. “I just want to be sure we’re thinking of the same person before we summon him.”

                “Whoa, hold on,” Joe said, turning to glare at Pete. “Who said anything about summoning the demon? Hasn’t that done enough damage?”

                “What else is the logical next course of action?” Pete asked.

                “Is that a joke? Or maybe a test?” Joe asked. Pete rolled his eyes.

                “Look, dragons aren’t real, but he made one. He’s powerful, so this dragon might not follow conventions we’ll have heard of. Any information we can get out of him will help us.”

                “Do we have to kill the dragon?” Patrick asked. “It’s not its fault that it was made to do something this terrible. Shouldn’t we take this fight right to the source?”

                “This isn’t a wild animal,” Pete said, voice strained. Joe could feel the tension leaking from him into the bond, and he wished he could think of something to do to help. “It was created for the sole purpose of destruction. We have to get rid of it. And the demon doesn’t exactly have a physical location most of the time, so taking care of him would be a hell of a lot harder.”

                “But who’s to say he won’t just make another dragon?” Patrick pressed.

                “Shit,” Joe said. He felt his heart sink as he realized what Patrick had said. He made a compelling point. If this thing was powerful enough to make a dragon, what stopped it from making another?

                “Maybe you’ll have to fight it as it’s going after everyone!” Sola gasped, bug-eyed. “Oh, that would be so stressful.”

                “Not to mention the fact that that thing was nearly impossible to kill,” Patrick said. “I mean, those scales were fucking tough. Killing one in ideal conditions will be a miracle.”

                “And it’ll get bigger,” Andy said.

                Joe whipped around to look at Andy, eyes narrowed.

                “What makes you think it’ll get bigger?” he asked. Andy shrugged.

                “The thing’s terrifying, but it can’t wipe out ten thousand people. Not that size,” he said, shaking his head. “It’ll either get bigger or make friends.”

                “Well aren’t you an optimist?” Joe asked. “Jesus, okay. So you think you’ll be able to figure something out about the dragon if you talk to the demon, Pete? Weaknesses, hopefully?” he asked.

                “Hopefully,” Pete agreed. “I can’t make any promises, but we’ll definitely learn something.”

                “You want us to summon him again?” Sola asked, fear clearly written all over her face.

                “No, I can do it. No need for the theatrics,” Pete sighed. “Don’t make fun of me when you learn the name, okay?” he added, turning to his band. Joe gave him a confused look, and Pete rolled his eyes. “He’s got a bit of a reputation in pop culture. Try to forget what you think you know about the demon with his name, okay? I promise, unless you’ve been reading the Apocryphal Bible, it’s all just made up because they thought the name was cool.”

                “You’re doing a stellar job of building up the suspense,” Patrick said.

                “It’s just embarrassing,” Pete said, and his cheeks _were_ a little pink. He pulled a compact mirror out of his pocket and set it down gently on the grass in front of him. He sighed heavily, then glanced at Sola.

                “Azazel, we’ve got something to discuss,” Pete said, speaking directly into the mirror.

                Joe expected a dramatic shift. He thought that the sky would darken or thunder would ring or something, but instead he heard a small sigh come from Sola’s direction. Joe turned to the girl to ask her what was wrong, and promptly froze when he saw her eyes lit up a vivid gold he usually associated with Pete.

                “It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard from you, Pete,” Sola said. She still sounded like herself, maybe her voice pitched slightly lower, but not by much. Joe fell backwards onto his hands, crawling backwards a few feet.

                “Yeah, well,” Pete shrugged, a dry smile on his face. “You never came to my soccer games.”

                “You never call on Father’s Day,” the demon replied through Sola.

                “I brought a mirror, you can leave her alone,” Pete said, a harder edge in his voice than before. Azazel smirked.

                “Her soul is mine, so I might as well use her as a vessel,” he said. “It’s much easier to have a conversation with you like this.”

                Pete swallowed hard. Joe felt like he should step in and help, say something to the demon so that the burden didn’t fall all on Pete, but he had no idea where to start. The eyes mesmerized him, eyes exactly the same brilliant gold as Pete’s were…

                “What is this all about? Can’t you just leave her out of this?” Pete pleaded leaning in closer to the girl that everyone else had pulled away from.

                The demon possessed girl moved closer to Pete as well until they were nearly nose to nose.

                “Pete, I know you’re a little self centered, but what makes you think this is all about you?” he asked.

                “It’s my band,” Pete said.

                “That she wanted to see,” Azazel replied.

                “Leave her out of it. Leave _all_ the fans out of it,” Pete growled. The demon laughed.

                “Her being obsessed with you is a perk, but still a coincidence. You must believe more in the serendipity of the universe.”

                “Nothing to do with you is ever serendipitous,” Pete said. “And it’s kind of pretentious to use a word like that in everyday conversation. So let’s get to it. What can I do to make you stop?”

                “I keep my pacts, I’m afraid,” he said. “Have you seen the dragon I made? It’s lovely, isn’t it? I spent a lot of time studying pictures to make it as dramatic as possible.”

                “Wasn’t a fan,” Pete said through gritted teeth.

                “Shame,” he said. “I thought you’d see the beauty in it. After all, you always see the beauty in monsters, don’t you, Pete? Since you’re such good friends with them.”

                “Very different type of monster,” Pete said shortly.

                “And besides, I doubt you’ll be able to deny the creature’s majesty once he’s done growing,” he added as though Pete hadn’t spoken.

                “At the end of the tour, right?” Pete asked.

                “Just in time. Unless, of course, you find a way to stop me,” he laughed.

                “You sound like you want me to,” Pete said, his eyes narrowing.

                “Well, it would definitely be interesting to see,” he said. “If you’ve done nothing else, you’ve certainly made the world a much more entertaining place.”

                “What do you get out of killing all those people?” Pete pressed. His hands were clenched tightly into fists at his sides, but Joe could feel more anger than fear in him at the moment.

                Sola’s eyes closed, and for a moment, Joe thought the demon might have left, but Azazel opened his eyes at long last, cold despite their glow.

                “I’m so bored. So very, very bored,” he sighed. “I think it will help to entertain me.”

                “I bet you think that was really frightening,” Patrick said, making all of them turn to him. “But you sound kind of like a bratty five year old complaining to his mom about being bored with all the cartoons on TV. Have you considered getting a hobby? Maybe knitting?”

                Joe stared at Patrick in disbelief, but Azazel smiled over at him.

                “Fiery,” he said. “I see why Pete cares for you.”

                “And here I thought it was just my sunny disposition,” Patrick deadpanned.

                “How is it going for you?” he asked. “Pretending that at all times you aren’t petrified? A rabbit living in a den of friendly wolves, acting like you can hunt with them and praying that they will never realize how useless you are and turn on you.”

                “Pretty good,” Patrick said. “How’s it going for you? Pretending to be frightening and omnipotent when you everything you create is either too small to do enough damage or it turns on you? And only creating things because wherever you are, you’re trapped?”

                “Pretending to be frightening? Do I not frighten you, Patrick?” he asked.

                “I’ve been kidnapped by vampires, fought hellhounds, talked my way out of a mermaid terrarium, and was held in the murder castle of H.H. Holmes. I’m a little beyond fear,” Patrick said.

                “You don’t know what fear looks like,” Azazel said, his voice growing more pronounced, no longer sounding like Sola’s. The clouds in the sky darkened, and Sola’s lips curled back to reveal a mouthful of ragged yellow fangs, his eyes flashing like lightning. The cemetery was black, and Joe pushed himself further back from the girl, his hands scrambling to find purchase on the grass to pull away.

                “You ought to be afraid of me, very afraid,” Azazel said, his voice deep and sonorous now. “You ought to tremble in my presence. I’m the kindest thing you will ever find in a mirror. Your greatest fear is yet to come.”

                “Bring her back,” Patrick demanded.

                The skies cleared again, sun streaming down again as Sola’s face returned to normal. Pete snapped in front of her face, drawing the demon’s attention back to him.

                “I summoned you, not him,” Pete said. “Look, I’ll do anything you want for you to get rid of this thing.” He sounded desperate, and Joe wanted to reach out and tell him he didn’t dare, that he should stop, but he felt frozen.

                “Anything?” Azazel asked. “That’s quite an offer. Do you mean it?”

                Joe tried to force himself forward, but he couldn’t make his body move. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t warn Pete that this was a terrible idea.

                “Anything,” Pete repeated, his face stony.

                Azazel let out a laugh.

                “You’re quite lucky that I can’t take you up on that,” he said. “Things have already been set in motion, I’m afraid. I can promise only that you won’t die, whatever happens.”

                “Any tips on how to kill the dragon?” Pete asked.

                “Goodbye, Pete,” he said. “Give your mother my best.”

                The gold drained slowly from Sola’s eyes, then she blinked and they were brown again. Sola fell against Atalia, looking very small and very tired. Joe was no longer locked in place any more either, and he grabbed Pete’s arm, alive with fury.

                “What the hell did you think you were doing?” Joe yelled.

                “Finding us a solution!” Pete yelled back. “What were you doing, Patrick?”

                They turned to Patrick, but he was already on his knees, one hand on Sola’s knee while Atalia rubbed her back.

                “He’s gone, don’t worry,” Atalia said, glaring at Pete. The blaming look couldn’t be clearer, and Joe didn’t blame Pete for cringing away from her.

                “Well,” Andy said after a few beats of silence. “I was technically right. It’s going to grow.”

                “So if we kill it right before the end of the tour, he won’t be able to make a replacement,” Joe agreed. He glanced at Pete again, trying to make sense of the mess of emotions surging through the bond, but he decided he could confront him about that later.

                “But the dragon is still pretty much impenetrable,” Patrick said. “How are we going to kill something like that?”

                “I guess we’re gonna have to do some more hands-on research after the show tonight,” Joe said.

***

                “Dude, where the fuck have you been?” Dirty asked, punching Pete in the arm. The band had made it back just in time for soundcheck, having just enough time to drop the girls off at the bus and tell them to stay put. The techs all made sure to tell them that they sounded much better than yesterday, and Pete tried not to cringe. Whenever they finished a song they could hear the sound of cheering, very far away. According to some of security’s grumbling, the line outside had already stretched halfway across the monstrous parking lot. Fame, Pete realized, never stopped being overwhelming.

                “Hmm?” Pete glanced up, handing off his bass to someone already waiting with their arm outstretched.

                “You look dead on your feet,” Dirty said.

                “You’re a real ego boost, man,” Pete said, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

                “What’s the problem? Jeanae? Ashlee?”

                “Nah, nothing like that,” Pete assured him. “Magic stuff, actually.”

                Dirty wrinkled up his nose, only confirming to Pete that he did not want to hear about it. Much as he liked being in the loop, usually monster fighting wasn’t so much his speed. So it surprised Pete when he kept talking.

                “You want to talk about it?” he asked. Pete made a face. The two of them collapsed down in the green room on a stiff gray sofa.

                “There’s a dragon following us sent by my demon dad that’s gonna kill everyone if we can’t figure out how to get rid of it,” Pete said. Dirty digested that for a second.

                “Like a real, honest-to-shit dragon?” he asked.

                “Yup,” Pete said. “And we’ve got no goddamn idea how to kill it.”

                Dirty gave him a sympathetic look. “Sucks, man,” he said. “Want to go shoot Mark Hoppus with a water gun full of piss?”

                “Dude.” Pete feigned disapproval for almost a whole second before his face lit up. “You already have water guns?”

                “Duh,” Dirty said, and they took off.

                They ended up settling for filling the water guns with a combination of beer and red bull to give it the right yellow color. On their way to find +44 they ran into Gabe, leaving him coughing and sputtering and swearing as they ran by.

                After thoroughly drenching Mark, the two of them were running away and gasping for breath when Dirty unexpectedly brought up the dragon again.

                “Shame the thing breathes fire,” he said, keeping his voice low so that they wouldn’t attract Mark’s attention as he cursed Pete’s name. “It’d probably be easy to kill if it weren’t for that.”

                “What makes you say so?” Pete asked, his chest heaving. The despairing feelings that had temporarily abated descended on him again like a fog.

                “Well, if it weren’t breathing fire, couldn’t you just Harry Potter the fucker? Y’know, like the movie with the bloody walls and the giant snake. Take one of Andy’s bigass swords and stab it through the roof of the mouth and right through the brain.” He shrugged. “That’s what I would do.”

                “That’s… that’s not a bad idea,” Pete admitted. He aimed the water gun at his mouth and squirted some of the red bull/beer mixture at himself. It didn’t actually taste that bad. “But we’d have to get really close, and then there’s the fire, like you said…”

                “Well, you don’t have to use a sword,” Dirty shrugged. “You could use a gun or something. Real life isn’t Harry Potter, dude.”

                Pete was eager to share the new plan with his band, but by the time he made it back to the bus, catering had set up dinner for them, and Joe was leading Sola and Atalia out.

                “Where’d you go?” Joe asked.

                “Oh, you know,” Pete waved his hand.

                “PETE!” Mark roared. His hair was still drenched.

                “Water gun incident,” Pete said with a grin. “How are you doing, Sola?” He felt unbearably guilty about earlier in the day, though he wasn’t sure how to go about apologizing. He had expected the demon to appear in the mirror. He hoped it could be less frightening for her in the daylight, but clearly his plan had backfired spectacularly.

                “I’m fine,” she said, lying, but that didn’t surprise Pete. She looked, at the very least, like she was doing better. Her aura was more stable than Pete had seen it yet, and she seemed eager to get food and have a normal conversation. She also looked much younger than Pete had initially thought she was, now that it was daytime and her face was relaxed.

                “How old are you?” Pete wondered aloud, too late to worry about whether that was an appropriate question or not. Sola, predictably, blushed.

                “I’m fourteen,” she admitted. Pete felt ill, but still slightly relieved. Half the girls they met these days were twelve, but at least she was a teenager. He tried to remind himself that fourteen was way too young to die, but he was still grateful.

                “Atalia’s fifteen,” she said hurriedly, mistaking Pete’s silent relief for horror. “And I mean- it’s really not _that_ bad,” she said defensively.

                “Where do your parents think you are?” Joe asked, food already in hand. He, at least, managed to sound mostly amused.

                “Sola skipped town, but I smoothed it over,” Atalia said. “As far as they know, we are the lucky winners of a Fall Out Boy sweepstakes.”

                “Close to the truth,” Sola said with a shy smile. The two of them gave each other conspiratorial looks, then burst into laughter.

                “Don’t ever try to die for a shitty pop punk band again, okay?” Joe recommended.

                “I’m sure she’ll take that advice to heart if she gets to die twice,” Patrick said. The group of them sat down at a table, ignoring all of the strange looks the other bands were giving them, sitting down with two girls that were unmistakably fans. The Fall Out Boy t-shirts weren’t really helping the case.

                Gabe in particular kept trying to catch Pete’s eye, but Pete was focused entirely on the conversation at hand. He was looking at Sola and Atalia’s auras, fascinated by the way they moved. Whenever Sola’s aura shifted, Atalia’s changed slightly to match, as though she could tell her every emotion. As if that weren’t strange enough, Atalia’s aura was strangely shaped, not a smooth oval that surrounded her, not radial at all, but elongated, tendrils of emotion stretching from her towards Sola at all times. Protective. Longing. Unrequited. Familiar.

                Pete could see, if he payed very close attention, tiny wisps of his aura flickering towards Patrick, but he tried to ignore it and prayed that Bill wasn’t paying attention.

                Bill himself was giving the Fall Out Boy table questioning looks, much like Gabe had. Pete assumed the questions were along the lines of “Why are the fans from last night still hanging around?” but thankfully neither of them was entirely bold enough to come up and ask them.

                “This feels like high school,” Joe grumbled. “Sit with someone new at lunch and then there’s petty gossip.”

                “I usually ate lunch in the library,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “I was not going to put up with the cafeteria if I could avoid it.”

                “You really missed out on the high school experience,” Andy said mildly. “Did you even go to prom?”

                “Prom was vastly overrated, but not quite as overrated as After Prom,” Pete said. It was nice to have a normal conversation for once, while they were in front of who knew how many non-magic people, and it was also hilarious to watch ridiculously powerful emotions flare in both of the girls. They were good actresses, but they were still star struck. But, Pete thought with a sigh, no good things could last.

                Once the chatter seemed sufficiently loud, he leaned far into the table, lowering his eyes and his voice.

                “So, I have an idea,” he said, and was only a little miffed when Joe rolled his eyes.

                “About the dragon?” Patrick asked.

                “Well, not about the national debt,” Pete said. “Actually, Dirty had the idea, but it’s a good one. The scales are hard, so why don’t we go through its mouth?”

                The five of them stared at him blankly, and Pete rolled his eyes.

                “You know, like in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? With the basilisk?” he suggested.

                “Right,” Andy said, and they nodded, slowly. “You know that’s a kid’s movie, right?”

                “It’s a book directed at young readers,” Pete said waspishly, “And is there a flaw in the plan?”

                “I don’t know much about reptiles, but I’m not sure that’s as much of a weak spot as Harry Potter makes it seem,” Patrick said, looking doubtful.

                “How about that whole fire breathing thing?” Joe added. “That’s still a very serious problem, as that’s the main issue with dragons in the first place.”

                “We have guns!” Pete exclaimed. One of the techs, a pretty blonde girl with incredible shoulder muscles, gave Pete a weird look. Pete lowered his voice: “Look, we’re going to go dragon hunting tonight, aren’t we? Just bring your gun, Joe, and we’ll see if there’s any chance of it working.”

                “Pete-” Joe began, tired like a teacher that had explained a concept one too many times, and the voice made Pete crack a little.

                “What’s the harm in trying it?” he demanded, suddenly angry. “Look, we give it a shot, if it doesn’t work we move on! Do you have a better plan for how you’re going to take out a dragon ten times its size when we can’t get past this one?”

                Joe fell silent, but more in a way that made Pete feel like he was tired of arguing than that Pete had won any kind of argument.

                “Hey there,” Pete looked up to see Dirty grinning behind him. “Who are you ladies?”

                “Um,” Sola looked at Pete with wide, panicked eyes.

                “Fans,” Pete said. “They’re staying with us for the rest of the tour.”

                Dirty raised his eyebrows.

                “Lucky fans,” he said. Pete sighed.

                “I’ll explain later, okay?” he said to Dirty. “Has to do with the ragon-day, okay?”

                “Sure,” Dirty said. “That makes some kind of sense.”

                Pete sighed. They needed to come up with a better excuse for Sola and Atalia, but he couldn’t think of how to explain two young teenagers living with them that didn’t sound… horrible.

                Andy answered his question as though Pete had asked it out loud.

                “I’ve got an idea for your alibi for the rest of the tour,” Andy said. “My daughter’s gonna join us on tour after a couple more days with her grandma; would you two like to be some live in babysitters?”

                “You have a daughter?” Sola asked, bug eyed. “I mean, yes, absolutely, anything to help you, but… since when do you have a daughter?!”

                “I like to keep her out of the public eye,” Andy said. “Sound like an okay job?”

                “More than okay,” Atalia said, and her aura burned red like she’d said something embarrassing. Pete grinned down at the table. It wasn’t often that Andy got obsessed fans, but it never got old to Pete.

                “Alibi’s all settled then,” Joe said. “And we’ve got a show to get ready for. You guys wanna hang backstage, or just wait in the bus?”

                “Actually...” This time Atalia looked embarrassed even without seeing her aura, “Is there any chance we could be in the crowd? Just for tonight? I’ve never actually been to a Fall Out Boy concert before…” she trailed off, but Pete grinned.

                “I think the pit can squeeze in one more person,” he said.

                “Thanks,” Atalia said simply, though her aura blew up with excitement.

                Their concert was wildly and obviously better than the night previous, Pete insanely happy to be standing to the side of Patrick again rather than center stage all night. Being the lead singer, even just for a night, was way too nerve wracking, and Pete’s nerves were frayed and damaged enough without having to put up with that.

                Even Patrick looked sort of happy to be back in his usual position, a sort of smugness fading in with the rest of the colors surrounding him It was like a part of him, even if he wouldn’t admit it, knew that he was good.

                Pete tried to see Atalia in the crowd, but it was impossible to make her out. He hoped that somehow he could motion her backstage as the show was ending, but he had no chance, leaving them with an excess amount of time backstage while the girls found their way back to them. Having more time, naturally, meant that Gabe could corner him.

                “Pete,” Gabe pulled him aside. Pete groaned.

                “Look, dude, it wasn’t piss in the water gun, okay?” Pete said, holding his hands up. “If you’re honestly _that_ upset about your hair, then-”

                “Pete,” Gabe said again, more urgently this time. “Who are the girls with you? Why are they around? I know I was kind of out of it last night, but we heard some of it. Bill and I aren’t complete idiots.”

                “I never said you were,” Pete said, making a face. “What all did you hear?”

                “They sold their souls to see Fall Out Boy in concert?” Gabe asked.

                “Well, sort of, yeah,” Pete said.

                “And what’s up with the dragon?” Gabe asked.

                “You’ve seen it?” Pete asked.

                “No, but I keep hearing you guys talk about it because none of you are as slick as you think you are!” Gabe yelled. “Is there literally a dragon?”

                “Yes,” Pete said. “There’s literally a dragon, but dude, don’t mention it, okay? We have to keep things sort of down low on this tour. I don’t think the other bands or most of the techs are aware that any sort of magic exists, and I’m really not up to explaining all of this to Travis goddamn Barker while we’re mid-crisis.”

                “Mid-crisis?” Gabe asked, and Pete leaned his head back, groaning under his breath.

                He was nearly ready to explain everything when he heard a girl clear her throat, and he snapped back into battle mode, catching sight of the sweaty and breathless Sola and Atalia standing nearby, waiting for him.

                “Um, sorry Pete, Gabe,” Sola said. “But I think Joe said that, um, his words were ‘We’re started without him if he doesn’t get his ass back this minute,’” Sola said, flushing.

                “Super,” Pete said, “Look, I’ve gotta go.”

                “I’m coming with you,” Gabe said.

                “Don’t do this, not right now!” Pete pleaded. Gabe scowled at him.

                “I’m not just gonna help you with magic bullshit when it’s convenient to you,” Gabe said. “Since I’m apparently a part of the magic bullshit-”

                “Pete,” Sola pleaded.

                “FINE!” Pete yelled. “Follow me if you want,” he said, turning after Sola and Atalia.

                Joe frowned when they walked in, looking Pete up and down.

                “We’re bringing Cobra Starship?” he asked. Pete’s frown deepened.

                “What are you-?” he began, then turned to see that Gabe’s band had somehow joined them on their way out of the room. Pete shook his head. “Yeah, apparently.”

                “That’ll make it harder to sneak up on the dragon, but less likely for the bus drivers to leave us behind,” Patrick said. “Do you guys need weapons?”

                “Yes,” Victoria said, while all four of the guys said, “No.”

                Patrick gave her a sympathetic look and kicked open the trunk they had dragged into the green room. He pulled out a cutlass, gave her a questioning look, and handed it to her handle first once she nodded.

                “Where are we looking for it?” Pete asked.

                “Andy’s outside trying to see if he can hear anything from a distance,” Joe said. “If that doesn’t work, I can wolf out and see if I smell anything-”

                “The fans were all talking about all the weird smoke they could see from across the river while they were driving in,” Atalia said. “Plus people are talking about the smoke behind the venue online. It’s probably that way,” she pointed.

                Pete blinked at her,a little impressed.

                “Let’s get Andy and fight a dragon,” Joe said. He met Pete’s eyes, sighed once, and grabbed his pistol off of the shelf, jamming it unceremoniously into the waistband of his jeans before leading the hunting party out into the night.

***

                Though it was late in spring, it was already cold out that night while Andy was trying to find a dragon. He had assumed it would be pretty easy to see a plume of fire in the dead of night, but of course, he hadn’t thought about the dragon needing to stay hidden from the public until he was already outside.

                The cold didn’t bother him much, not as much as it was sure to bother the humans, but it was helpful in identifying the slightest brush of heat against his arm while he was looking another direction.

                The faintest wave of heat just barely whispered against his skin, and Andy turned around instantly. He thought he saw a wisp of smoke against the smoggy night sky over the cities, but he couldn’t be sure. His fists clenched as he lowered himself into a crouch, unsure of how to proceed. There was a decent chance that the dragon was in there, so he ought to tell the rest of his band. Then again, he wanted to be sure, and it wouldn’t take long.

                Andy sprinted into the darkness, unsure of where a dragon could even hide. They were in a city, and hardly in the best place for a giant fire breathing reptile to remain unseen. There were a few acres of field surrounding the stadium, a huge parking lot, and a cemetery across the street that they had already spent the whole morning in. He made it to the road that wrapped around the venue before deciding that, if there had been a dragon this far out, it was long since gone, somehow disappeared insanely quietly into the night.

                Andy was ready to turn around and tell them that he couldn’t find anything at all when he looked at the venue from a distance for the first time. Arced up with it’s head tilted back, already looking larger than the day before, Andy could see the black silhouette of the dragon blocking off the sky behind it, sitting on the arena roof. And from the sound of the voices that accompanied the light spilling out of the maintenance door, it was much closer to his band than he was.

                “Son of a…” Andy groaned, running in the direction he had just come from. He pressed for speed, and it took him almost no time to slam into Joe, almost breathless from exertion.

                “Holy shit,” Joe said, eyes wide.

                “Found the dragon,” Andy panted, pointing up.

                He could hear the dragon’s claws crunching on the roof first, and by the look on Joe’s face, so could he. The crunching was followed with the loud flapping of wings, and within seconds the dragon swooped down over them, causing the now oversized group to scatter in all directions.

                The creature was soundless as it attacked them, all the more frightening as the sickly white shape billowed down over Andy with barely a warning. He rolled out of the way of its outstretched claws as it swooped, trying to catch his breath as it soared away from them and turned, the edge of its wing almost skimming the grass as it aimed at them again.

                Flying towards them, the dragon opened its mouth rearing back with a hissing, spitting noise like a match being lit.

                “SHOOT IT, JOE!” Pete yelled. Andy looked over at Joe for just a second where he sat far off to the side, and definitely not in range of the dragon’s mouth. Andy had his hand on the hilt of his sword when the hissing got louder and he had to duck, flattening himself against the ground as he felt white hot fire roaring just over his back, ruffling his hair with its energy.

                Andy rolled onto his back, gasping for air, and he scrambled back to his feet. The dragon had stopped not far in front of him, and it reared its head back again. Andy half-ran, half-stumbled forward, yanking his sword out of its sheath as he ran.

                He had just enough presence of mind to realize that stabbing the dragon through the roof of its mouth would be a death sentence, so he he slashed as deeply as he could as he threw himself to the side, feeling the almost gummy resistance as his blade met the soft flesh of the dragon’s mouth.

                Andy managed to roll out of the way before the fire came, but in the fall his arm caught on something sharp, and pain ripped through him from where he was cut before he even landed on the dewy ground.

                For its part, the dragon still breathed fire, but it was more of a sputter than a hose of flame, and it let out an unearthly shriek as it did.

                Andy’s vision was a white starburst of pain, but through the blurriness he could see the dragon take wing again, gusts of wind brushing against him as it flew away, slightly unsteady as it made its escape.

                “That was fucking awesome, dude!” Pete yelled, but he sounded watery somehow, intangible and cold. Andy tried to spring back to his feet, but the ground was just as liquid as all of his other senses, and he fell unsteadily onto his hands and knees.

                “Andy?”

                Andy gritted his teeth until he felt acute enough pain in his jaw to detract from his arm, then pushed himself back onto his ass, inhaling deeply. He twisted his arm around to get a better look at the cut, and though it tore through his shirt, it didn’t actually look that deep. A bit of blackish blood trickled down, dribbling sluggishly across his arm. The good news, then, was that the injury itself wasn’t that bad. The bad news was that the dragon must be venomous. Which was definitely unfortunate.

                “Andy?”

                The voices around him were becoming more concerned, but no clearer, but Andy tried to focus.

                “Uh-huh,” he said.

                “Are you okay?” someone asked. It sounded like Joe. An itchy sort of burn flared from his arm, and he hissed in a breath through his teeth before clamping his other hand over the wound, as if trying to mute the injury.

                “Shit, did it claw you?” Joe asked.

                “Teeth,” Andy said from behind gritted teeth. He had to get the words out, in case no one else figured it out. “It’s venomous.”

                “Fuck, should we suck the venom out or something?” someone, Patrick maybe, asked worriedly.

                “And you with the vampire out of commission,” Andy murmured.

                “It doesn’t look that deep,” a girl’s voice said. “Why don’t we just…”

                If she finished her sentence, Andy didn’t quite hear it, he just felt something else that burned being splashed against his arm, and the pain dissipating slightly, his vision clearing up.

                “Where did you learn that trick, girl scout?” Pete asked.

                “You know, washing a wound out isn’t exactly the pinnacle of modern science, Pete,” Victoria said, sounding annoyed. Andy blinked until his vision looked only a little worse than normal, glancing down at his arm again. The blood flowed freely and red now, and his band looked relieved.

                Andy could still feel something in his system, but it didn’t burn anymore, instead it just made him feel unpleasantly slow-reacting, like he had been drinking alcohol.

                “I don’t think it’s too bad,” he said, still taking deep breaths. “It was a shallow cut. Not like we can take dragon bite to the hospital anyway,” he said with a short laugh. “Anyway, did you see that?”

                “Hell yes I did,” Pete said, his eyes alight. I think we found our dragon’s soft spot. So, come the end of tour…”

                “Yeah, but if it’s bigger, we’re gonna have a whole other set of problems on our hands,” Joe said, ever the optimist. “I mean, a sword just made it angry. We’re gonna need a bigger gun.”

                “Bigger than that gun, anyway,” Alex muttered, glancing at Joe’s antique pistol. Joe scowled.

                “If not shooting it, what do you suggest?” Sola asked.

                “I didn’t say that we _shouldn’t_ shoot it…” Joe said. Andy let his mind drift off. His arm was still throbbing where he had been cut, and he decided to slowly start pulling himself up to his feet.

                The world was still rocking as though he were onboard a ship when he stood up, but he was able to stay on his feet if he focused, which he saw as a win. Andy looked off into the distance where the dragon had disappeared, and wondered if it would go into hiding or fly straight to the next venue.

                “Andy?” Pete was right next to him, though Andy hadn’t noticed, and he jerked back, sending the world spinning again.

                “Yeah?” Andy asked. His senses were all twisted, and Pete was giving him a deeply concerned look.

                “Do we need to take you to a hospital?” Pete asked. Andy shook his head.

                “I really don’t think that’d work,” he said. “But I think we should see if Dr. Ferrum does house calls. Just in case this doesn’t work its way out of my system.”

                “I’m on it,” Pete promised. Andy could still hear everyone arguing, and he sighed.

                “We’ll figure it out,” Pete said, patting him on the shoulder. “Trust me, I can’t lie.”

                After a rather lengthy explanation to all of Cobra Starship about the necessity of killing a dragon that was stalking them, and then repeating the entire thing to The Academy Is, at Gabe’s insistence, everyone in Fall Out Boy piled into Andy and Patrick’s bus with the girls for the first section of the drive.

                “Why is it always our bus?” Andy grumbled.

                “Guess you guys are just lucky like that,” Joe said with a smirk.

                Andy spent the night drinking as much water as he reasonably could while Pete talked to Ferrum on the phone. She was, according to Pete, already dealing with a few patients out in LA, but said to call her immediately if things got worse. In the meantime, Andy needed to “hydrate aggressively.”

                Andy kept drinking water while thinking about his brief encounter with the dragon. It was strong and fast, but not impervious, which was a start. The problem, then, was the angle at which they would have to get him at. They hadn’t managed to shoot the dragon, but in truth, none of them were excellent shots in the first place, and if they couldn’t get it exactly right, they’d have to stab it. But there were so many teeth, and Andy had just proved how obviously wrong something like that could go…

                “We have to get inside it,” he said, almost too quiet to be heard, but Joe turned to him, face completely contorted in disbelief.

                “What did you say?” he asked.

                “Just an idea,” Andy said, frowning.

                “Get inside it?” Joe repeated. “Do you have a dragon kink that we need to discuss?”

                Andy winced, ignoring the girls’ grossed out looks at Joe’s words.

                “No, I-” his arm throbbed and he paused to chug more water, “I think that unless your aim improves a lot in the next couple of months, we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. The problem is that it has teeth. So I was thinking: what if we get around the teeth? Attack it from inside its mouth?”

                Everyone stared at Andy, and none of them looked convinced.

                “That’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard,” Patrick said. “No offense or anything, but remember that whole fire breathing thing?”

                “It obviously isn’t burning its own mouth,” Andy said, defensive now. “Look, it was just an idea, forget I suggested it.”

                “Aren’t you, like, extra flammable? You know, as a vampire?” Pete asked.

                “He’s a vampire?” Atalia asked.

                “Half,” Andy said. “Just forget it.”

                “No,” Joe said, much to Andy’s surprise. “It’s… well, it’s not a good plan, but it’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” He cast Andy an amused look. “I’ll work on my shot, but it’s definitely not a bad idea to have a contingency plan.”

                “I sort of like it,” Sola said. Andy glanced at her, and she blushed. “It’s very fantastic. A proper dragon slaying.”

                “Fall Out Boy: Dragon Slayers Extraordinaire,” Andy said dryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting, and for reading, haha! I hope you enjoyed finally getting to meet our demon relative, and I know this chapter wasn't the most fun ever, but trust me, the rest of this season is nonstop ridiculous and very peterick heavy, so I hope you're excited! (don't worry, there's still a plot outside of the peterick if that's not your cup of tea) I hope this wasn't too boring, and thanks for bearing with me. As always, tell me what you thought in the comments or on the tumblr, and thanks for reading.
> 
> Chapter Title by My Chemical Romance


	10. Princess of the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While babysitting for Andy's daughter, Sola and Atalia make a mistake that leaves Patrick to take care of an interesting predicament.

It didn’t take long for Andy to develop platonic feelings for the two stowaways, as Fall Out Boy had begun to lovingly call Sola and Atalia. Sure, part of it was the witty humor, part of it was how much the girls fawned over him without being creepy, but mostly, he loved how great they were with Carmilla.

Carmilla was always an issue on tour. Andy loved her endlessly, and he wanted her around all the time, but it wasn’t easy to keep a toddler around a rock tour. It was often too loud and too dangerous for her. Plus, while Andy would trust the bands on tour with his life, he wouldn’t put it past some of them to blow weed smoke directly into his two-year-old’s face. Leaving her with Mixon didn’t always work either, even though Matt was incredible about the kid, because it just wasn’t his kid. Her grandmother loved having her around, but she couldn’t even take Carmilla out in the sun.

Now, with Sola and Atalia on tour and feeling very repentant for the fast growing dragon, they were eager to help the band in any way that they could. The best way they could help, in Andy’s opinion, was watching his daughter.

“Girls,” Andy said, grinning at the two of them as he walked over to them. Carmilla was fussy, squirming in Andy’s arms and working herself up to a good cry. 

“Soundcheck already?” Atalia asked, one eyebrow raised.

“‘fraid so,” Andy said. Carmilla had handfuls of Andy’s hair in her fists and was sniffling.

“Dada!” she complained. “Dada no! Don’t leave!”

“She sounds insistent,” Sola laughed, stretching her arms out to grab Carmilla.

“Why are you going?!” Carmilla demanded.

“Daddy has got to go to work,” Andy said, kissing her on the head. There was enough anger in the kid’s eyes that he almost snuck the babysitters a bottle of Benadryl. Almost.

“All of her books are in the bus, storytime usually calms her down,” Andy said. “Also, if she gets thirsty-”

“Warm up one of the juice boxes in the fridge, sixty seconds on high. It’s not our first rodeo,” Atalia said. “Aren’t you late?”

“Yeah, I am,” Andy sighed, leaning down and kissing Carmilla once on top of her head.

“I hate you!” she said, her lower lip jutting out.

“Call me if you need anything,” Andy added.

“We’ll be fine,” Sola said, waving him off. “Go!”

Andy nodded and ran back to the main stage at top speed, blowing past some security and venue workers. He was getting lax about keeping his powers secret, but honestly, he was reaching a point where no one would believe it if someone claimed they saw him drinking blood or running too fast. He wasn’t really concerned about getting outed as a vampire, not half as concerned as he was that some press snooping around Pete and Ashlee’s dates might see him cradling his daughter.

When he got on stage he saw Pete, Joe, and Patrick with their heads bent together in what Andy had labeled ‘business mode.’ The only question was whether it was music business or magic business.

“-well, as it turns out, it’s not that easy to get ahold of a straight up old fireman’s outfit,” Pete was saying. Magic. “-but I did find a place that sells fire retardant shirts and pants. It’s expensive, but if I send in our measurements-”

“That’s great, but what about our faces? Hands?” Joe asked.

“What are fireman’s masks made of, anyway?” Andy asked. “Plastic would melt and glass would shatter.”

“I’m sure we’ll find out before the tour’s over,” Patrick said. He glanced up at Andy, smiling slightly, although he looked exhausted. “Soundcheck?”

“At long last,” Joe said. “I can’t believe you left us for your other kid, daddy.”

“I left you because you called me daddy,” Andy replied drily. Andy wasn’t even sure why he had to sit through all of soundcheck. There was rarely anything wrong with his drums, and then he just sat behind his kit for an antsy hour or so while Patrick shifted his mic around indecisively. 

That particular day, Andy almost started drifting off, leaning back behind his kit and letting the sun beat down on his face through the scaffolding. Even with earplugs in, he could hear Patrick going through scales, echoing around the empty arena. With all the singing and the lazy heat, Andy couldn’t hear the girl, and it took him a long time to see her.

But then, all of a sudden, he realized that one part of the scaffolding was uneven. The lattice pattern was broken, and the blackness against the bright sun didn’t make much sense until he squinted very hard and saw that what looked like a piece of cloth was actually a girl.

There was a girl sitting on the scaffolding.

“Holy fuck!” Andy gasped. That alone was probably too quiet to hear, but him falling off of his stool and crashing into the drums was louder. His band was quickly on top of him, all worried faces.

“Andy?” 

“What’s wrong?”

Too stunned to answer for a moment, Andy eventually pointed skyward and stuttered out “There’s a girl up there!”

“Shit!” Patrick said, squinting up at the shape. “Are you sure?”

“Can someone please help me down!” it was definitely a girl’s voice distantly calling down. Andy felt a small wave of vertigo just seeing how high up she was, swinging her legs back and forth.

“I’m gonna go call security,” Pete said, dashing off-stage. The rest of them stared up at her, completely transfixed.

“Please, I need a prince to save me!” the girl cried. She sounded very afraid, not that Andy could blame her. But a prince?

“Someone’s on their way to help you down,” Patrick called up to her, then made a face. “How did you get up there?”

Rather than responding, the girl threw something over the edge. It was so big at the top that Andy almost thought she had thrown herself over the edge, and he scrambled backwards, but nothing hit the floor. Rather, the end of a very long, very frayed rope dusted the stage, trailing all the way up to the girl. But it wasn’t quite a rope, he realized, stepping closer. It looked almost like-

“Is that your hair?” Andy asked, torn somewhere between horror and hysterical laughter at the surreal feeling overcoming him.

“You have to climb it to save me!” the girl yelled down at them.

Pete had come back, Charlie in tow, while the other three stared at the hair.

“Hey, is your name by any chance Rapunzel?” Patrick asked.

“How did you know?” the girl cried.

“Lucky guess,” Patrick said faintly, too faint to be heard as high up as she was. “Guys?”

“Rapunzel is just a fairy tale,” Pete said, but he sounded uncertain.

“And yet!” Joe said quietly but harshly, gesturing up at the girl.

“Someone help me down!” she cried. 

“Okay, let’s deal with the issue of whether or not princesses are real later,” Joe said, shaking his head. “Charlie, can you get her down?”

Charlie looked at Joe with a pained expression on his face. “You know, you guys don’t pay me nearly enough to deal with this magic bullshit.”

“We’ll give you a raise,” Pete said faintly.

“Right,” Charlie grunted. He walked over to the edge of the stage, approaching the scaffolding nervously. Andy looked at him nervously, thinking that the metal lattice looked easy to climb in theory, but not so simple in practice. The criss-crossing metal beams were a little too thick to grip comfortably, and rather than horizontal like a ladder, they were at a steep diagonal.

“Better be a big pay raise,” Charlie muttered, hauling himself up and beginning the climb. He was about ten feet up when the girl shrieked and threw something small and brown at him, conking him in the head. 

“Fuck!” Charlie yelled, his grip slipping slightly. He let himself drop back to the ground, rubbing his head. Andy ran over and picked up the object she had thrown. It looked like a leather boot.

“Is this her shoe?” Andy asked.

“Only the prince can come up and save me,” Rapunzel said, somehow managing to sound snotty and entitled from the distant cry.

“Fantastic,” Charlie said. 

“What the hell does that mean?” Andy asked.

“Which of us is the prince?” Pete yelled up to her.

“The prince!” she screamed back, belligerent.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Joe groaned, going over to the scaffolding. He only got five feet up before she screamed again, throwing her other shoe at him. 

Back on the stage, Joe was scowling.

“I say we leave her up there,” he said, visibly annoyed. 

“Well, one of us must be the prince or she wouldn’t still be talking to us,” Andy said. “And this could… hypothetically… be a sign of something serious.”

“It’s a trapped, bratty fairytale girl,” Patrick said, disbelief plain on his face. “What’s the serious problem? That we’re stuck in a Shrek movie?”

“Well, I’ll give it a shot,” Andy said. He already didn’t like Rapunzel, but they couldn’t leave the girl on top of the scaffolding all night, nor could they let her jump to her death.

It was easier for Andy to climb the scaffolding than Charlie or Joe, and he got much higher than either of them, nearly halfway to the top of the structure before Rapunzel started screaming.

“It’s not you! I need to be saved by the prince or the story won’t be right!” she sounded less angry and more fearful this high up. Andy sighed, climbing back down and gently lowering himself onto the stage.

“One of you want to take a crack at this?” he asked Pete and Patrick. The two of them looked at each other with twin expressions of martyrdom.

“So remember that time I told a reporter you were on vocal rest so you wouldn’t have to talk?” Pete said.

“Yeah, fine,” Patrick rolled his eyes and pulled his hoodie off. Andy felt a brief wave of panic seeing that Patrick’s palms were already slick with sweat, but he tried to tamp the feelings down.

Patrick wiped his hands off on his jeans nervously before he walked over to the scaffold. He put his hands on the metal, glanced skyward, and started climbing. He didn’t even get both feet off of the ground before she let out a cry.

“No! You have to climb my hair! That’s how the story goes!”

Patrick groaned.

“You didn’t make anybody else climb your freaking hair!” he yelled.

“The  _ prince _ has to climb my hair,” she called. Patrick whipped around to face the others. Andy shrugged.

“I’m not calling you ‘your highness,’” Joe said.

“Very helpful,” Patrick said. “I know I didn’t go to high school with you guys, but I think you can already imagine how the rope climbing part of gym class went for me. And her hair looks silky. Do we have any plans?”

“Do you want to give it a shot?” Pete asked.

“Not really,” Patrick said, eyeing the rope of hair. Andy glanced at it too. It was platinum blonde and as Patrick mentioned, it looked very silky looking.

“I’m also not a prince,” Patrick added faintly. 

“Please save me!” Rapunzel whined. 

“They’re gonna start filing in the pit soon,” Pete said.

“Thanks,” Patrick said acidly. 

“What if you climb the scaffolding while pretending to climb her hair?” Andy suggested. “Like, bring the hair with you?”

“Bring the hair with me?” Patrick repeated. “If I climb the scaffolding without breaking my neck it’ll be a miracle.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Andy asked. 

Patrick squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then grabbed the hair with one hand and tugged it over to the scaffolding. He threw the hair around his neck like a scarf and started climbing, muttering something Andy couldn’t hear under his breath. 

Andy watched from the ground, his fists clenched tightly until Patrick reached the top. At which point Rapunzel let out an excited cry and ran over to him. She didn’t knock him over in a hug, though it seemed like she was about to, as Patrick held his arms out to stop her.

“Come back down with me?” Patrick suggested.

“You have to carry me, I think,” Rapunzel said. 

“That’s not happening,” Patrick said. “But I can go down first and catch you if you lose your balance?”

The princess seemed to think about it for a second before nodding eagerly, and the two of them began the long climb back down. 

When the two of them got to the bottom, Patrick was very pale and unsteady looking, and he held onto the scaffolding for a long time with his eyes closed once his feet were touching the ground.

“You okay?” Pete asked in a low voice, and Patrick nodded as Rapunzel collapsed onto the stage as well.

“You saved me,” Rapunzel said dreamily.

Now that she was on the ground, Andy could finally get a good look at the princess, and he had to admit, she was absolutely stunning. Long and billowing hair aside, she looked beautiful in a young, innocent way, with wide, round eyes and a dark pink mouth. She wore a long dress that looked more like a nightgown than something Andy could have found in European history, but she wore a tight bodice around the dress that hinted at an older design. She was undeniably gorgeous, but she had eyes for no one but Patrick.

“You saved me,” she repeated, pulling herself unsteadily to her feet. “However can I repay you?”

“Um, don’t mention it,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. He looked like he had a headache, but the princess didn’t notice.

“I have to thank you for all you’ve done for me,” she said, and to Andy’s immense shock, she began unlacing her corset.

“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?” Patrick asked, catching her wrists in his hands with a look of panic coming over his face. She looked up at him with her too big eyes, blinking naively.

“I want to thank you, sire, by consummating our relationship.”

“Oh,” Patrick said. “What the fuck?”

“What the fuck?” Andy repeated in a whisper.

“What the fuck?” Pete said, much louder than the other two.

“I have to thank you, my lord,” Rapunzel said. “I have to provide your happily ever after. Unless you would prefer to marry me-”

“NO,” Patrick said too loud, covering his mouth and taking a step back, which had the unfortunate side effect of making him let go of Rapunzel’s hands, which went right back to her bodice. She was practically ripping the laces off in her eagerness, and the dress underneath her bodice was thin, nearly see-through. Andy turned away.

“Am I having a stroke?” Joe asked.

“Are we having the same stroke?” Andy asked.

“All four of us? At our age?” Pete asked. “Seems unlikely.”

Rapunzel stepped closer to Patrick, and he stepped back, and she stepped closer again. It would have looked predatory were it not for her large, shimmering eyes. 

“Please, let me lie with you. It would be an honor, my lord,” Rapunzel said, tugging at the collar of Patrick’s shirt. Patrick looked down at her, and bit his lip, hesitation quickly winning over his face. Andy realized what was going to happen about a second before it did.

“We should go somewhere else,” Patrick said to Rapunzel.

“What?” Pete gasped. Patrick shrugged at him.

“We wanna solve this, right? And I mean, she seems insistent.” Patrick didn’t look much like he minded as he said this.

Rapunzel squealed, throwing her arms around his neck and jumping up so that her legs wrapped around his waist. 

“Show me the other room,” she said directly into his ear. Patrick threw the rest of them a look somewhere between smugness and embarrassment and then walked backstage, holding Rapunzel tightly in his arms, her hair dragging behind the two of them.

“Hell of a stroke,” Joe said faintly. 

“Did that just happen?” Pete asked. “Is Patrick…?”

“About to go fuck a fairytale?” Andy said. “Yup. Not what I thought we’d be doing today,  but not technically the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“It’s not?” Charlie asked, shaking his head. “Yeah, I still definitely want that pay raise.”

“So while Patrick tries to, um, dispel the fairytale,” Joe said, glancing up at the sky as he spoke, “We can try and figure out where this shit came from.”

“Pete, you saw her aura, any chance she was just a really overzealous fan?”

“Huh?” Pete jerked as if coming out of a stupor. “Um, I don’t know. It looked, like, really flat when I saw her up close. Like it was fake or something.”

“Well, that tells us what we already know,” Joe said. “Maybe Patrick’ll learn something else.”

“Andy!” 

Andy turned around to see Sola and Atalia running up to him, Carmilla curled up with her face in Atalia’s neck.

“What are you doing here? It’s too loud in the arena for her,” Andy said, grabbing for Carmilla.

“We may have a situation,” Atalia said. “Um, have you seen any, like, storybook princesses around here?”

“Why, what did you do?” Andy asked, the goodwill he’d felt toward them earlier melting away. Sola groaned.

“Carm wouldn’t calm down, even when we were reading her stories, so we thought if they were more captivating she might pay attention,” Sola said, wringing her t-shirt in her hands. “So, since I’d done magic successfully before-”

“You sold your soul to a demon for concert tickets,” Joe said.

“Successfully!” Sola argued. “Since I’d done it before, I figured I would try to animate one of the books. You know, kids like stuff that moves.”

“Well, you definitely did a number on animating the book,” Pete said. “What were you thinking? I mean, what the hell were you thinking?” Pete’s fists were clenched, and he looked disproportionately angry. “Why the fuck would you try to do magic again? Jesus, how much can two teenage girls fuck up?”

“Out of line,” Andy said sharply to Pete, his eyes narrowed, but Sola and Atalia already looked stricken. He turned back to Pete with a questioning look, and Pete looked away, apparently embarrassed by the outburst.

“We’re sorry,” Sola said, then glanced at Atalia. “I’m sorry, I mean.” The poor girl looked weepy again.

“We’ll figure it out,” Joe said. 

“Where’s Patrick?” Atalia asked, and Andy grimaced. 

“Well-” he began, and then Patrick ran back onto the stage, his hair mussed and all of him covered in a pale powder.

“So the Princess is gone,” he announced.

***

“Patrick has to fuck the princesses back into the storybook,” Atalia said, her face twisted up as she spoke. 

“So it would seem,” Joe agreed. 

“Did I swear that much when I was fifteen?” Pete asked. 

“More, I’m sure,” Joe said tightly. Sola looked embarrassed, and Joe glared at Pete.

“Okay, so how many princesses are there?” Patrick asked. He had wiped the powder off of his glasses and his face, but his shirt still looked like he had army-crawled over dusty ground recently. His pants were pristine, but Joe was actively trying not to think about it.

Andy had gone back to his bus with Carmilla for the time being, but he assured them that they’d be back when she fell asleep and he found a tech willing to watch her for an hour or two.

“There were six stories in the book,” Atalia said, laying the pink, plastic-y looking book out on the table. She opened to a full color picture of Rapunzel, smiling and two-dimensional again. “Rapunzel, obviously.”

“And the others?” Patrick looked somewhere between apprehensive and excited, and Joe felt hyper aware of him through Pete.

“Cinderella,” Atalia said, moving a few pages forward to reveal an empty picture. 

“Naturally,” Joe sighed. 

“Snow White,” Atalia said, pointing to a picture of an empty glass casket. “Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and, um,” she opened the book to the last story, where a girl stood still in frame, holding her hands out in front of her. “The Frog Prince seems to have disappeared too.”

“Oh, okay,” Joe said with a shrug. “That’s fine, then.”

“That’s not fine!” Patrick said, affronted. “What makes you think that’d be fine?”

“You’re into guys too,” Joe said, rolling his eyes. “So assuming he’s a generic pretty boy just like the others are generic pretty girls…”

“I’m not into guys too!” Patrick said, arms crossed. “I have girlfriends.”

“And a boyfriend?” Joe said, slightly stunned that they were having this argument.

“He wasn’t a boy! He was a city!” Patrick said, leaning further back in his seat and looking embarrassed.

Atalia held one finger up, both of her eyebrows raised.

“What the fuck are you guys talking about?” she asked.

“It’s a long story,” Patrick said, at the same time as Joe said “he fucked the city of Chicago.”

“The whole city?” Sola asked.

“NO!” Patrick yelled, covering his face with his hands. “Jesus, we didn’t come here to discuss my fucking sex life!”

“Well, unless there’s another prince we don’t know about, yes we did,” Joe said. He felt a wave of emotions from Pete, and he gave him a sharp look. “I mean, the resemblance is uncanny,” he said, flipping back to the picture of Rapunzel and her prince, a dark blonde man with a very Patrick-like look of smugness on his face. The same blonde prince was in all of the stories, except for the Frog Prince.

“Maybe we need to find a girl for the Frog Prince,” Patrick said, sounding hopeful.

“Maybe,” Pete agreed, sounding almost as hopeful.

“Well, hopefully it’ll go in chronological order,” Joe said. “And in the meantime, we’ll try to find another way. We’re not gonna make you fuck anyone against your will,” he said, scrunching his nose up. “God, the music industry is weird. Do you think the Beatles ever had problems like this?”

“I’m sure John Lennon wouldn’t have minded this kind of storybook scenario,” Andy said as he stepped onto the bus, looking haggard. He looked down at the book on the table. “Also, I don’t even recognize that book. The only princess book Carmilla owns is ‘The Paper Bag Princess.’”

“What’s a paper bag princess?” Sola asked.

“It’s feminist,” Andy said. “It’s her favorite book. I would never get her a book where the moral of the story is that girls need to be saved by  _ pretty boys _ ,” he said, putting extra disdain in the last two words. He paused, then turned to Patrick. “No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” Patrick said, looking mildly pleased. 

“If you didn’t get the book for her, where’d it come from?” Joe asked, attempting to keep the band on task. “I mean, I don’t read princess books in my free time. Pete?”

“Why do we always turn to me with girly stuff?” Pete sighed. “No, it’s not mine. I’ve got fairy tales, but not that one.”

“Maybe this wasn’t the girls’ fault at all, then,” Joe said. “Pete, can your dad make kids’ books materialize out of thin air?”

“Fuck dude, I don’t know,” Pete laughed, but it didn’t sound like he thought it was funny.

“Sounds like something he’d do,” Patrick said. “Just to fuck with us? Maybe?”

“And Pete complains about us swearing,” Atalia muttered.

“Maybe we should look into it,” Joe said. “Even if we don’t want to talk to him again-- I’m sorry, do you hear music?”

The sound of a dreamy waltz was playing outside somewhere, very soft but getting louder with every note. It was an eerie, beautiful sound. Joe looked out of the kitchen window, but there were no speakers he could see.

Joe jerked his head towards the door before he walked outside, the music hitting him full blast. It sounded like there were an invisible orchestra somewhere in the hot summer parking lot full of buses. Joe looked around, but there was still no sign of where the music was coming from.

The others followed him out of the bus, all of them looking around the area just like he had, confused and searching for the source of the music. He met Patrick’s eye, and Patrick shrugged. 

Joe was about to open his mouth to ask if they should just go back into the shitty bus air conditioning when he saw a figure in the distance running towards the bank of buses. Soon she was close enough for Joe to make out her more distinct features, and he could see it was another girl, this one with her hair piled up on top of her hair and wearing a long, wide ballgown.

“Hey, Rick,” he said, unenthused.

The girl ran to Patrick, sweeping him away from the crowd and into the vast empty space in the parking lot. She appeared to be forcefully dragging him into an approximation of a waltz, except Patrick stumbled over his feet, nearly knocking her over. It took him a moment to get into the groove of things, but he took over leading, twirling the girl around like he was enchanted, a dazed haziness in his eyes while they spun.

“Who’s that?” Pete asked.

“Well that’s obviously Cinderella,” Andy said.

“But it it’s Cinderella, then what about-?” Pete began, and the girl pushed Patrick and ran off, leaving a sparkling golden slipper behind. 

Patrick picked up the shoe, then stumbled back over to his band, dazed looking. 

“I guess I should keep this around then, huh?” he said, holding up the shoe. He frowned. “Are these Grimm fairy tales or, like, Disney fairy tales? Because the original Sleeping Beauty and the original Snow White are not stories I’m comfortable being the prince in. I’m pretty sure their princes fuck them while they’re unconscious.”

“Guess we’ll find out when we get there,” Joe said. “Again, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Patrick rubbed his head, blinking very fast. 

“At least I’ve got a while before that one comes back,” he said. “Um, should we go research?”

“Maybe rest up, Prince Charming,” Joe said. “Meanwhile, Pete, could we have a word? In private? Like, very in private?”

“Sure,” Pete said, something dark flickering behind his eyes.

“Cool, we’ll be back,” Joe said, and he grabbed Pete by the elbow and dragging him a few buses away, in the shade of a bus but out of earshot of Andy, even with vampire hearing factored in.

“What?” Pete asked. “You’re being weird.”

“Look,” Joe sighed. “I’m not gonna say it out loud if you don’t want want me to-”

“Say what out loud?” Pete asked, his voice venomous.

“Nothing,” Joe said, rolling his eyes. “You can keep pretending nothing’s going on if that’s what you want to do. You’re a grown-up, and if you want to make terrible decisions that’ll ultimately just screw you over in the end, that is all your business. But if you ARE going to pretend that nothing’s going on, do me a favor and pretend a little better?”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Pete demanded. 

“I mean Patrick is going to have sex with people!” Joe half-shouted. “You’ve got a girlfriend and no goddamn claim on him, so stop acting so weird about this! He’s your best friend, he had two tough break-ups right in a row, and he’s recovering with lots of casual sex. I’ve never really had a break-up after high school, so I can’t say whether or not that’s healthy, but I know for a fact that it’s none of your goddamn business. And you can’t take it out on freaking teenagers either. Maybe this princess bullshit’ll be good for him.”

Pete fumed, glaring at Joe.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Yeah, sure, you two have got some weird sexual tension straight out of Livejournal and we’re not supposed to talk about, but-” Joe didn’t get to finish as Pete punched him in the face. It was a sloppy punch, stunning Joe more than hurting him, but it got him to stop talking long enough to notice the edgy, desperate look on Pete’s face.

“Would you just drop it?” Pete asked, his voice strained. 

“Just don’t take it out on other people,” Joe pleaded, his voice softer.

“Got it,” Pete hissed. He turned to walk away and Joe grabbed him by the elbow again, holding him there.

“What?” Pete asked, looking up and blinking rapidly.

“You can, I don’t know, talk about it. If you want. Or something,” Joe said, feeling awkward and itchy in his skin. 

“You don’t want to hear it,” Pete said, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“ _ Are  _ you going to do something about it?” Joe asked.

“Is this the part where you tell me to not ruin the band by dumping feelings all over it?” Pete asked scathingly. Joe physically lurched backwards, stunned by the question.

“No, of course not!” he said. “I just, you know, wanted to know. I mean, if you guys wanna share a bus or something, I’m gonna have to seriously cut down on smoking, because that’s not gonna fly with Andy.”

Pete’s eyes looked suddenly moist, but Joe decided to ignore it.

“Andy would leave a mess everywhere,” Pete said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to just put up with the sex noises?” 

“I’d take him to dinner first, cowboy,” Joe said, rolling his eyes. Pete took a deep breath. 

“It wouldn’t be weird?” he asked.

“Oh, fuck no, it’d be weird as hell,” Joe said. “And it might end the band, yeah. But it might not, right?”

“You think I should, what, talk to him about it? He might not even be interested,” Pete said.

“I’m not gonna talk you into or out of this,” Joe said. “I’m all teen movie’d out for the day.”

“Thanks. It was starting to get weird.” Pete smiled at him. “I’ll think about it. After we survive the princess bullshit.”

“Fuck yeah,” Joe said. 

The two of them were walking back towards the bus they left them at when Andy ran up to meet them.

“Found another princess,” he said, looking harried. “Or, um, one of the techs found another princess. Somebody’s passed out on a table in a conference room and Patrick went to check it out.”

“Black hair or any other color? That’ll tell us if it’s Snow White or Sleeping Beauty,” Joe said. 

“We didn’t actually ask for a hair color,” Andy said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, let’s go see the damage done.”

The three of them were able to move through the venue at shocking speed, despite trying to avoid fans and having a near miss when they almost walked out where the line was filing in. 

The group managed to reach the conference room before Patrick did, and the girl on the table was, Joe had to admit, a little alarming. The girl’s hair was a flat black, feathered out nearly to her waist, and her lips were really blood red, which sounded prettier in the stories than it looked in real life. It was sort of frightening in reality, especially paired with her ice white skin.

“Do you think Patrick will wanna fuck her?” Joe asked quietly.

“Why are you whispering?” Andy asked at a normal volume. “She’s enchanted. She won’t wake up until Patrick either kisses her or fucks the apple out of her windpipe.”

“That’s disgusting and not anatomically realistic,” Joe said.

“That’s how the story goes,” Andy said. “But he won’t fuck her while she’s asleep, so let’s hope this is Disney so we don’t have to cart around the catatonic princess for who fucking knows how long.” 

“Hey, sorry, I got held up,” Patrick said, sliding in the door panting for breath. He had a pink lipstick mark on his cheek, and in spite of the conversation he had just had with Pete, he couldn’t help but smirk. 

“Who held you up, Casanova?” Joe asked, and Patrick flushed slightly.

“Ran into Vicky,” he said hurriedly. Joe patted Pete on the arm in what he hoped was both subtle and supportive. “Anyways, Snow White?” he asked, peering around them at the girl lying out on the table. 

“So it would seem,” Andy said. 

“What’s the plan?” Joe asked Patrick. Patrick looked apprehensive. 

“Can I kiss her? I mean, should I try kissing her?” he asked.

“You can give it a shot,” Joe said, motioning over to the sleeping princess. Patrick walked up to her, paused in front of the table, biting his lip as he stared down at her.

“I mean, this feels super creepy,” he said, wiping his hand across his forehead reflexively. “I can’t just, like, kiss some stranger while she’s passed out.”

“That’s how the story works, my dude,” Joe said, shoving him a little. “You know, you’re supposed to be, like, overcome with love. And shit.”

“I’m not overcome with love,” Patrick said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d be seriously concerned that that girl is a corpse. I don’t want to kiss a corpse!”

“We’re not gonna make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Joe said, but he hesitated.

“But?” Patrick asked wearily.

“ _ But  _ it would be nice if you gave it a try. One kiss?” Joe asked. Patrick closed his eyes and shuddered, but he leaned over and quickly pecked the girl on her blood red lips. He jumped back, and the four of them stared at her.

The girl didn’t move.

“So, you left Carmilla with the girls again?” Joe said in an awkward attempt to break the silence. “You don’t have a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, right? Because Patrick definitely cannot fuck a wild thing.”

It definitely served to break the tension, as Pete fell into a ball on the ground laughing, and even Patrick giggled as he wiped his lips off on his shirt. Andy looked mildly worried, but laughed along with them. But the girl still laid there, motionless.

“Look, I’m not fucking the poison apple out of her. That’s gross, and definitely rape,” Patrick said, glaring down at Snow White as though she had died just to spite him. “So what else?”

Joe surveyed the sleeping girl as well. She looked the most similar to her Disney cartoon version thus far, her dress a silky blue and yellow. But what about the original story? Joe hadn’t been too enthralled with fairytales and legends growing up, and once he was a part of one, he was even less interested. A part of him wished he’d been like Pete, studying every piece of information he could get his hands on to be the best fae he could possibly be. Pete was the walking encyclopedia of magic knowledge, because research was what staved off his panic attacks. But Joe just prefered not knowing, and now he felt like he was paying for it. He didn’t know a damn thing about Snow White, other than the fact that he liked the dwarves when he was a kid.

“How do you even fuck an apple out of someone?” Joe asked. “That makes no sense at all.”

“It’s more the movement than anything,” Pete said. “The story goes that the apple was so poisonous it killed her before she could finish swallowing, so it got stuck in her throat. When the prince came along and was so overcome with lust that he had to fuck her, the motion made her cough up the apple, and since she never swallowed it, all of her symptoms went away.”

Joe chewed over that in his head for a minute.

“So, like the Heimlich maneuver?” he asked.

“Kinda, yeah,” Pete said. 

Joe looked between the three of his band mates.

“Then why doesn’t he just try and give old Snowy the Heimlich?” Joe asked. The room was silent for a moment.

“That makes a lot of sense, yeah,” Andy said. 

“Christ, what’s the point of college education with you two?” Joe asked, annoyed. “Patrick, do you know how to do this?”

“No, but you do, so why don’t you do it?” he said.

“What if she’s like Rapunzel? It probably won’t work unless it’s you,” Joe said. “Magic is weird like that. C’mon, it’s easy, I’ll show you on me.”

After all the near death experiences, it wasn’t actually all that uncomfortable to impatiently pull Patrick’s arms around his waist and manipulate his hands into fists. He demonstrated as best he could before shoving Patrick back at the girl.

“Just try not to break her ribs. But don’t do it too gently, either, or she could swallow it for real, and then you’ll have killed Snow White,” Joe advised. Patrick glared at him before easing himself up onto the conference table and lifting the girl’s torso up. He grunted a little under the strain.

“You know, in the original story, Snow White is a very small fourteen year old girl,” Pete said unhelpfully. Patrick glared.

“She’s a very goddamn heavy fourteen year old, then,” he said. “And thanks for reminding me to ask how old she is when she says she wants to thank me. Jesus.”

Patrick pulled inexpertly at her chest. Truth be told, it looked much more like an inept hug than it did like he was trying to dislodge an apple from her chest, but he was trying his best, rhythmically yanking hard against her.

Joe was close to just telling him to give it a rest so he and Andy could drag the lifeless girl back to their bus when her eyes flew open and she spat a chunk of something green and white out of her mouth. The apple hit the wall of the conference room with a damp thud and she curled in on herself, coughing and spluttering and clutching her throat.

“Shit,” Patrick whispered, and then started rubbing her back while she coughed, his free hand steady on her shoulder. “Hey, shit, sorry, are you okay?”

“I couldn’t- couldn’t breathe-” she gasped, her chest rising and falling as she tried to regulate her breath. “How did you?”

“It’s a long story,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “But are you okay?”

The girl turned around to face Patrick, and by the sudden wide eyed expression on Patrick’s face, she must have looked intense.

“You’re the prince,” she purred, pushing him down onto his back onto the conference table.

“You’re not fourteen, are you?” Patrick asked, gulping. 

“No,” she giggled. 

“Fifteen?” She shook her head. “Jesus, you’re not thirteen, right?”

“You saved me,” she said, her voice breathy.

“Have fun, buddy,” Joe said, ushering Andy and Pete out of the room. He winked once at Patrick before slamming the door on the two of them.

***

It wasn’t like Patrick didn’t like sex. Sex was something he obviously liked. It was like pizza or field trips or puppies or getting drunk. It was impossible not to like, as far as he was concerned. But Patrick was starting to realize there was too much of a good thing.

He was also pretty sure that this wasn’t the rock star stereotype he was supposed to be living up to, given that half of his orgasms that day had come from his friend with benefits that was on tour with his band and the other half had come from a magic children’s book.

Jesus, that sounded pervy.

Once, Patrick and Anna had locked themselves away in Patrick’s room in the apartment all weekend, Bed in for Peace style, only occasionally leaving for hot food or to use the bathroom. As fantastic as it had been, it was nothing like this. Most of it wasn’t actually sex but foreplay leading up to it or snuggling afterwards. Patrick was comfortable enough in his masculinity to absolutely adore lying in bed with a girl after all was said and done, just staring at the ceiling and talking and playing with her hair. The princesses thus far hadn’t seemed big on foreplay, and they turned into dust the second he came. 

By the time he got around to Sleeping Beauty stretched out across the couch in their green room, Patrick already felt tired.

“So this one’s just a magic kiss, right?” he asked wearily.

“Oh man, bad timing. Should we perform first?” Joe asked. 

“He’s got time, the Academy is still on,” Andy said. Patrick heaved a sigh as he walked to the girl, kneeling at her side and cradling her head gently in his hands. 

“I still don’t like kissing them when they’re unconscious,” he complained, wrinkling up his nose as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

Unlike Snow White, Sleeping Beauty came to life beneath his fingertips, warmth pooling under his mouth almost immediately as he felt her exhale into his mouth.

“My prince,” she whispered, dragging Patrick on top of her on the couch, pressing her lips back to his again. Patrick succumbed easily, rolling her on top of him and pulling her closer.

Patrick didn’t mind the sex, even though he felt mildly weary of it. He heard his friends grumbling as they cleared out of the green room, but he didn’t mind so much. Sleeping Beauty was tugging at his shirt, mumbling under her breath that she wanted to do everything she could for him.

“Why?” Patrick asked, voice slightly muffled by the hair in his mouth.

“Hmm? What’s that, my liege?” the girl asked, her hand still pressed against Patrick’s chest. Patrick rolled his eyes. 

“I was wondering why,” he said. “You know. Why do you feel like you should thank me with-” he gestured at her, her dress almost all the way off, “-you know, all of this. Usually I get a grudging ‘thank you’ and that’s it. But you’re insisting on this. Isn’t happily ever after supposed to be about marriage, anyway? It’s never sex, that wouldn’t be very Disney.”

“What’s a Disney?” Sleeping Beauty asked. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Patrick said. “But, seriously, why not marriage?”

“You’d rather talk than… anything else?” Sleeping Beauty asked. “That seems unusual.”

“Well, around these parts I’m not regarded as usual. Plus, I’m apparently a prince, so that’s new to me,” Patrick smiled cheerlessly at her. “So tell me: what’s your name? It’s not Aurora, right?”

“Briar Rose,” she said, looking delighted to have been asked. “You can call me Rose, if you like.”

“Rose,” Patrick sat up, pulling her up with him so that she perched on his lap, shockingly light. “What do you want? More than anything?”

“I want your approval,” she said. “I want to make you as happy as you’ve made me by saving me.”

“But that’s not how to story goes,” Patrick protested. “Princess movies exist so that the princesses get to be the heroes! Sure, the prince slays Maleficent’s dragon and all, but she’s living her own life until he shows up. I don’t think there’s a Rapunzel story, but… look, the point is that there’s more to life than the prince.”

Briar Rose nodded along while he spoke, but it was evident that she wasn’t paying attention. 

“I just want to thank you for saving me!” she said brightly. Patrick groaned.

“This is really what you want?” he asked, looking down at himself.

“All I want,” she nodded. Patrick took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sighed.

“Yeah, fine,” he said, pulling them both back down and mashing his lips into hers.

Patrick had the foresight to pull off his stage clothes this time, so that when the girl exploded into dust it wouldn’t coat everything he was wearing. In some ways, the princesses were like vampires, he thought. Mysteriously attracted to him, insatiably searching after one thing, turned into dust…

Patrick got dressed and told the rest of his band to come back in, more than a little embarrassed that they just had to wait for him while he had sex, but he was getting better at dealing with the idea as the world’s strangest day went on.

“Three down, three to go,” Andy said cheerfully. Pete wouldn’t meet Patrick’s eye at all.

According to all of the techs and a far too amused looking Joe, Patrick sounded “breathless and sexy” during the set, but the comments didn’t bug Patrick as much as they would have once.  

They moved back to Patrick and Andy’s bus after the show, Carmilla asleep and blissfully unaware of all the trouble her storybook had caused.

“I still don’t think it’s her book,” Andy said. He was adamant about this. They’re conversation felt almost sleepy with the bus window open to the purple night, summer air creeping in but not doing much to provide a breeze.

“Okay, but our only other idea thus far is that Pete’s demon father materialized the book here,” Patrick said scathingly. “And it’s not like the girls are hurting me, so what would be the point?”

“Well, as far as you know they’re not hurting you,” Pete said darkly. “I mean, they could have any number of toxins.”

“Thanks for the support,” Patrick rolled his eyes, but Pete looked nervous, so he dropped it. “Isn’t it more likely that someone else gave her the book and you just didn’t notice?”

“I packed all of her stuff!” Andy said. He wasn’t quite raising his voice, but as far as Andy went, it came close. “I know her books and that isn’t one of them.”

“We didn’t give it to her,” Sola piped up, her voice squeaky. 

“We trust you,” Patrick said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked half-melted when he met her eyes. Patrick looked down so he wouldn’t laugh at her. He thought that she and Atalia would get over being such… fans, if they lived with them, but they still seemed starstruck. 

“Anyway, you’ll all be happy to know that I found a guy at our next city who will make us fire retardant suits. Custom fit,” Pete looked smug. “It’s a little pricey…”

“Well, we don’t all need one,” Joe said at once. “Andy obviously can’t kill the dragon, since being a vampire makes him about as fire retardant as a bundle of dry kindling.”

“Thanks for the vote of support,” Andy said.

“And I think we should really look for someone as small as possible if we’re going to be doing something as stupid as getting inside a dragon’s mouth. I’m a little taller so… really, only you’re going to need this, Pete,” Joe said, taking a deep breath. “You’re short and kinda twiggy, so you’re perfect for it.”

“I never pictured dragon slayers looking like me,” Pete said, looking bemused. “I always thought you’d need to be taller, but I guess not.”

“Don’t people usually slay dragons with bows and arrows?” Patrick asked.

“Is there a ‘usually’ when it comes to dragon slaying?” Joe asked. “I mean, really? Where are you guys getting this from?”

“Did you not read fantasy books as a kid? Play D&D in high school? Are you too popular to hang out with us? Be honest,” Patrick teased. He wanted to keep the meeting light, but he couldn’t help feeling a little cheated. It wasn’t as though he was that much heavier than Pete, and he was a much better fighter than him. But he wasn’t about to protest Joe’s decision out in front of everyone. He’d rather just stew in it.

In fact, Patrick felt much less inclined to argue with Joe recently. He wondered if it was a pack thing, that he was just naturally inclined to follow his leader. Or perhaps Joe was just getting better at leading. 

Either way, he must have been upset enough for Pete to see it in his aura, because Pete rested his hand on top of Patrick’s, sending an electric jolt up Patrick’s arm. Patrick glanced at him and Pete gave him his typical, knowing smile, the smile that told Patrick that Pete got it, he understood, he sympathized. He felt more at ease almost at once.

“No, I’ve actually been laid once or twice in my life,” Joe said.

“If it’s only been once or twice, I’ve had more sex than you just today,” Patrick said. “On that note, who’s next on the list? The Little Mermaid, right?”

“We’re in a suburb of Pittsburgh,” Pete said sourly. “How the hell does that work out?” 

“Tomorrow’s in Virginia,” Sola said. “Maybe she’ll show up then.”

“I could use a night off,” Patrick laughed. “And it’ll give you guys some more time to find out why this is… targeting me.”

“Why don’t monsters like this ever target me?” Joe asked.

“All the monsters target me,” Patrick reminded him. “You’re welcome to take the vampires along with the hot girls.”

“I’ll pass,” Joe said, wrinkling up his nose.

As they prepared to go to their separate buses for the night, Patrick couldn’t help feeling strange at the separation. Cramped as it was, a part of him almost longed for the days when they were all stuffed in Joe’s awful old van. Almost. The makeshift recording studio he could currently bring on the road usually was enough to make him forget that he liked his band.

Patrick grabbed Pete’s arm as he walked off, eager for him to stay a little longer, a little closer. To keep talking into the early hours of the morning, from late sunset to early sunrise. All he had to do was say something to keep Pete there.

“You know, if Ashlee doesn’t mind, you could probably fuck the Frog Prince,” Patrick blurted out. He resisted cringing outwardly.  _ Smooth _ .

Pete looked amused, both his eyebrows raised way up behind his bangs.

“Charitable of you,” Pete said. “How do I know he’ll be my type?”

“What’s your type?” Patrick asked.

Pete looked he was thinking very hard about the question before betraying himself with a toothy smile.

“Hot,” he said. “My type of anyone is hot.”

“What meets those standards?” Patrick asked, leaning in a little closer, wondering why the sudden pull towards Pete. Pete bit his lip and looked up, then down, anywhere but Patrick’s eyes. 

“Guess it all depends,” he said. “Maybe a good personality. Maybe a nice mouth. Long legs. I don’t know,” he glanced back at Patrick. “But I’ll talk to Ash and let you know, okay?” 

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “Yeah, okay.” He touched Pete’s shoulder though he didn’t really need to and turned it into half a shove. 

Patrick went to bed and fall almost instantly into an easy sleep, lulled to sleep by the rocking of the bus.

It felt like he had just fallen asleep, however, when he woke up suddenly, his head slammed against the wall and hearing their bus driver cursing loudly. The bus seemed to have stopped, so Patrick walked to the front to see what was going on, only to see the bus driver and Andy already staring at a girl wrapped in a very old, very dirty beach towel banging on the tour bus door.

The girl, her hair soaking wet and hanging nearly down to her waist, slammed her hand against the door window. Patrick might have told the bus driver to just keep going if he didn’t recognize the specific look in those big, Disney looking eyes by then.

“You want me to call security?” the driver asked.

“No,” Patrick groaned. He was exhausted, but he rolled his shoulders back stiffly. “Let her on, she’s probably cold out there.”

“How do you know this one is a princess and not a deranged fan?” Andy asked nervously, as soon as they were out of their driver’s earshot.

“You have superpowers,” Patrick said drily. “I think you’ll come to my rescue if anything goes too terribly wrong.”

“I don’t want to listen to you fucking the little mermaid,” Andy said. “That’s on the bottom of my list of things to do today.”

“I’ll only scream if I’m in trouble,” Patrick promised. The girl walked onto the bus, looking unsteady and in pain as she did so, but she beamed when she saw Patrick.

“Hey there, sweetie,” Patrick said. He snatched a blanket off of the couch and draped it around her shoulders. She gave him a grateful look, still dripping wet and shivering. Patrick led her over to the couch and gently sat her down, her legs sticking out at strange angles as she fell onto her ass, giving him an “Oops!” look as she fell.

“I’m gonna go make sure Carmilla’s still sleeping,” Andy sighed. “Do you, um, need anything?”

“I think we’re alright. Are you okay?” Patrick asked the girl. She pointed to her throat, and he frowned. “I know you can’t talk, but are you… hungry? Thirsty?”

She nodded eagerly, and Patrick sighed, patting Andy on the shoulder. “Um, go get some sleep, I’ll take care of this.”

“Night,” Andy lifted his hand in a half-wave as he walked back into the bunk area. Patrick flipped open his phone and groaned. It was five in the morning, late even for him. Probably early to someone who was running on a decent sleep schedule.

The girl made a small, distressed noise, and Patrick glanced back up. Water, right. He grabbed an old plastic cup from the kitchen and filled it with tap water. When he gave it to her, she drained it all in one gulp. She gave him a grateful smile, and he almost laughed.

“Do you want more?” he asked. She nodded, and he refilled her cup, this time to the brim, and she drained that as well. They repeated this process twice more before she seemed content, and she leaned her head back. Something about her seemed different from the other princesses, a little less polished in her dirty towel with dark shadows under her eyes. Her eyes were darker and less vivacious, but welcome to Patrick for exactly that reason.

“You were my favorite,” he blurted out while sitting next to her. She cocked her head at him, her eyes wide with question, and he blushed, suddenly grateful that his band was not around to observe this particular interaction. “Well, I mean, not my favorite princess, I guess Jasmine was my favorite. But you were my favorite story, when I was a kid. I liked the idea of loving some music so much that you could, I don’t know, fall in love with someone just from the music you heard them make. It felt sort of… romantic.” The word ‘romantic’ felt sticky on his tongue. “Just… something about music I guess. But you’re not the Disney girl. Do you like music?”

The girl nodded hesitantly, like she wasn’t certain, and Patrick gave her a shy smile.

“Do you mind if I just work for a bit?” he asked, gesturing to his laptop on the table. She shrugged, and Patrick pulled the computer up onto his lap, hesitantly unplugging his headphones as he opened the Cobra Starship track he was working on. He lowered the volume and listened to it again, this time without headphones on so he could hear how it echoed. 

He leaned over the laptop and began tweaking, pulling parts of the track and trying to make them all flow cohesively, playing the whole thing through again when he was done. He almost forgot that anyone was sitting next to him until the girl made a surprised happy noise and nuzzled into his shoulder when he played it complete.

“Yeah, you like it?” Patrick asked. She grinned and nodded, and he yawned and stretched.

“Good to know. Anyways, it’s late, and we should get to sleep. You want your own bunk, or you wanna sleep with me?” Patrick asked. She nodded for the second option, so he slung an arm under her shoulders, pulled her up, and helped her into the back bedroom. She was still wearing the dirty towel, so he handed her an old t-shirt and some basketball shorts he was pretty sure belonged to Pete and then turned around so she could change. 

She tapped him on the shoulder after a minute and rocked back and forth on her heels, looking very sweet in his old clothes. Something about this girl intimidated him less than the other princesses, her shy mannerisms, her enthusiasm. He knew logically she was probably just as, to use Pete’s term, two-dimensional as the others, but she seemed real enough to him.

She felt more real than the other princesses, especially wearing his clothes. If he took off his glasses and pretended very hard, she could be Anna, snuggling up against him after a long, hard tour just to be close. 

Patrick sighed before they even got on the bed. He was a few breakups removed from her and still thought about it. Maybe he’d never actually heal from loving someone, but just keep getting more and more hurt. 

Patrick did lie down, though, and he patted the bed next to him. The girl eagerly climbed in, snuggling up under the covers and pressing her cold, still slightly clammy feet up against his legs.

“Jesus, you’re cold,” he muttered, pulling her in closer into his arms. She nuzzled up against him and seemed to fall asleep almost instantly. He hummed into her scalp and fell back asleep with her as the sun started to rise.

“Hey, jackass.”

Something soft and warm and sort of damp hit Patrick in the head. He pulled himself up, disentangling himself from a girl’s arms and blinking blearily at the figure in his doorway. A rolled up, sweaty sock fell down onto his lap. A few blinks later, the figure became distinguishable as Pete, his arms crossed, and with a disapproving look in his eyes, sterner than Patrick remembered Pete usually looking. Patrick felt small and guilty under his gaze.

“What’s up?” Patrick asked, feeling the woman shift next to him, trying to get closer to him again.

“I could ask you that,” Pete said, looking betrayed. “Who’s she?”

“The Little Mermaid, I think,” Patrick said, shrugging. “She hasn’t spoken, and she showed up soaking wet with no clothes, so it stands to reason.”

“Then why’s she still here?” Pete asked.

“Oh!” Patrick laughed a little, nervously. “I haven’t, er, done it yet.”

“‘Done it’?” Pete repeated. “What are we, twelve? Or do you mean you haven’t kissed her yet?”

“I haven’t kissed her yet,” Patrick said. He pulled the blanket up a little higher, feeling strangely bare in front of him, and still guilty. “I was just… lonely last night, I guess.”

Pete laughed a strange, strangled laugh.

“Usually when guys are lonely they do what you didn’t,” Pete said.

“I just wanted to be with someone,” Patrick said, feeling the telltale warmth in his cheeks of his face flushing. Somehow admitting an emotional loneliness felt much more embarrassing than talking about sex.

“Well, it looks like you had sex, and your girlfriend seemed upset about it,” Pete said, jerking his head to the wall to gesture vaguely outside. “She ran off after she came in to see you like this.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend- Jesus, we’re not exclusive or anything,” Patrick felt a sickness growing in the pit of his stomach. “Fuck, if we were I wouldn’t have kept her over. Did she look really upset?”

Pete made a face. “She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look weepy. Vicky’s not much of a crier. Don’t know what she sees in you.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Patrick said. Pete still looked disapproving. “What else?”

“You know the original story of the Little Mermaid, right?” Pete asked. “It wasn’t all roses like in the Disney movie. Part of her curse was that walking on land felt like she was walking on a bed of sharp knives.” Patrick felt the sickness pooling in his stomach get more solid.

“She’s in pain?” he asked. Pete shrugged again.

“Guess you’d have to ask her,” he said. Patrick took the sock Pete had thrown and threw it back at him, his face twisted in guilt.

“Very fucking funny!” he shouted. “I wouldn’t have waited if I’d known she was hurting! Fuck, that must be why she was walking like that!”

“Good luck with all of that,” Pete said.

“What else?” Patrick asked. 

“What do you mean what else?” Patrick asked. Pete looked suddenly frightened as he stuck a hand out to hold onto the door frame.

“You’ve been acting pissed at me,” Patrick said. “I didn’t ask to be the prince or whatever. Are you pissed at me?”

“I- fuck, not over a fucking princess book,” Pete said, his eyes wide. Patrick’s heart sunk down to his already thick and guilty stomach.

“You’re pissed at me,” he said. “What are you pissed about?”

Pete bit his lip and looked up at the ceiling, out of the window, down at the floor, anywhere but at Patrick.

“I have no reason to be angry at you,” Pete said carefully.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Patrick said. “Do you want to punch me? I mean, I’d hit you back harder, but if it helps you get over it, I think it’s worth it.”

“I don’t want to punch you!” Pete said. “Well, not a lot. I’m still kind of pissed about our single choices, but I’m mostly over that.”

“Then what is it?” Patrick pleaded. Pete finally met his eyes.

“I’ll tell you later, okay?” Pete said. Patrick opened his mouth to protest but Pete kept talking before he could get the words out. “Look, I swear I’ll tell you in my own time if you stop bugging me, and that’s the best you’re gonna get. No puppy eyes either, Rick.”

Patrick seethed, but gave an assenting head jerk. Pete lit up almost like Patrick had made him happy, but his eyes still looked sad.

“Go save your princess. And your not-girlfriend,” Pete said, and he pressed a sloppy kiss on the crown of Patrick’s head before dashing out of the room.

Patrick looked down at the sleeping woman in his bed, her red hair strewn across the pillow, and allowed himself one brief moment to be wistful for the person she might have been if she were given the time to live before he pressed his lips softly to hers.

***

Pete was having a rough week.

His jeans had recently been destroyed in a shitty hotel washing machine, his long-lost father had reappeared just to make his life difficult, there was a dragon chasing after his band, and the guy he had a crush on had to be the hero by sleeping with a small army of beautiful women.

Really, with all that he had going on, it was completely understandable that Pete forgot his current girlfriend was coming out to visit.

“Hey there, angel dust,” he said, quickly schooling his expression into excitement. He moved in for a kiss and Ashlee stopped him with one finger pressed against his chest, bent over at the waist with a silent fit of giggles.

“Did- did you just call me ‘angel dust’?” Ashlee asked, still laughing. 

“Why?” Pete asked warily.

“That’s another name for PCP, baby,” Ashlee said, kissing Pete on the cheek in a manner that felt more conciliatory than loving. “I missed you too. How’s the tour going?”

“The shows are great,” Pete said bracingly. “Really great. But, you know, the magic stuff is a little complicated.”

“Yeah, you mentioned being followed by a dragon,” Ashlee looked concerned, but not like this was particularly surprising news. “How’s that going?”

“We’re working on it,” Pete said. “I’m just not sure how safe it is for you to be here right now.”

“Well, there are a lot less evil trees this time around, so we’re already doing better than the last magical trip with you,” Ashlee grinned. Pete could only look at her for so long before smiling in return. He wasn’t close to Ashlee yet, but the girl’s smile was contagious. 

That might have been the best thing about Ashlee. She was shockingly easy to be with. There weren’t really fireworks with her, but there was something, maybe akin to a sparkler. But she understood Pete, not on the deep, under the skin sort of level that Patrick understood him, but she understood him day to day. She could commiserate over paparazzi and journalists from hell. She knew about the entire world staring at them under a cracked microscope, misrepresented and misunderstood in a way that Pete’s band didn’t. They tried, of course they tried, but Pete could only complain about press for so long before one of them got fed up and reminded him that the press didn’t care enough about them to make this an issue. And then Pete just felt guilty for having issues in the first place.

Ashlee understood that too. She knew the struggle of trying to keep up with non-famous friends, of not knowing how to vent without sounding bratty. She understood what Pete meant when he talked about wanting more and less at the same time, about craving the attention and wanting it all to go away. 

Plus, she was gorgeous. She was absolutely beautiful, there was no denying that, and while a nice personality was obviously more important, looking good wasn’t a downside. 

Pete liked being with her. He liked the sex, the kissing, the friendship, and he even sort of liked the romance. But he wasn’t quite in love with her. He knew it wasn’t fair to her to drag her along, but he didn’t know how to end it either. Usually Pete was the one getting broken up with, or his relationships exploded in a metaphorical ball of fire. Was there a non-shitty way of saying: “It’s not you, it’s me”?

“You still with me, babe?” Ashlee asked. Pete snapped back to attention.

“Yeah, sorry, just distracted,” he said, blinking a few times. “Um, did you want to do something tonight?” he asked.

“I’d rather just stay in, if that’s okay with you,” Ashlee said, looking up at Pete through thick eyelashes. “You don’t have to be anywhere early tomorrow, right?”

She was tugging at the hem of her shirt, making her low neckline plunge even lower. It was definitely going to be hard for Pete to take the moral high ground if she was going to keep looking like  _ that _ , all sweaty and dark eyed. 

Of course, the tunnel vision part of his mind that could only focus on Patrick kept bringing Pete back to what  _ Patrick  _ would look like if he were looking at Pete like that. Pete gulped.

“Nowhere I can’t cancel on,” he said breathlessly. Ashlee giggled and kissed Pete on the cheek.

“Go take care of your sound check,” she ordered. “I’ve got some calls to make, and I’ll see you later tonight.” She walked her fingers down his chest to the top of his jeans for emphasis before dashing off and leaving Pete feeling dazed.

Pete didn’t have a chance to make it far before he saw someone running out to meet him.

“Pete!” Joe shouted, nearly caught up to him. “Hey, fuck, we need your help.”

“What now?” Pete asked.

“There’s a frog loose in the venue,” Joe said. “And we’re not sure, but we think this might be a special sort of frog, if you get my drift.”

Pete blinked.

“Ah, hell,” he groaned. “It’s not staying still?”

“Nope,” Joe said. “Not even for Patrick, so we’re not sure if this is it, but, like, this is a really bright green frog. And kinda big.”

“Does it look like the one missing from the storybook?” Pete asked. Joe shrugged. They were walking back towards the venue, walking quickly, but not exactly hurrying.

“Nobody but the girls ever saw the inside of our mystery storybook, remember?” Joe asked. “They said that it could be it, but they aren’t sure.” Joe rolled his eyes, and Pete felt a brief pang of guilt that he was quickly able to quell. They didn’t want to mess up again, which he could relate to, but he still couldn’t feel all that bad for someone who sold her soul for concert tickets. It was exactly the kind of dumb shit that Pete could see himself doing, and he always had less patience for things that reminded him of himself. 

“Hey, is this the last one?” Pete asked, perking up slightly as he asked.

“Nope,” Joe said. “There’s still Cinderella, remember? She just left her shoe behind, Patrick’s still gotta find her. But just those two.”

Pete must have looked bummed, because Joe sighed and continued.

“Hey, it’s just those two. And then you’re gonna say something, right?”

“I haven’t actually made a decision yet,” Pete said as they walked into the blissfully cool air conditioning of the venue. He paused. “And Ashlee’s staying over.”

Joe glared at him.

“I’m not going to get involved,” he said. 

“Good,” Pete said.

“But know that I think you’re being both an idiot and kind of a jerk,” Joe said. Pete huffed out a sigh as they rounded the corner and saw a very large frog sitting frozen in the middle of the hall.

“Shit, that’s him,” Joe said needlessly.

Pete jumped forward, throwing himself down a little too soon. His hands almost closed around the frog, but it was just a little out of reach, and with an indignant ribbit it hopped away from him and down the hall.

“Get him!” Pete growled, and Joe sprinted past him, skidding across the tile floor on his knees and snatching the frog. It made shockingly loud noises of distress, but Joe held it triumphantly.

“Come on, let’s go find Patrick,” he said as he got back up to his feet, the frog still struggling hard against his grip.

“Jesus, dude, don’t crush the frog,” Pete pleaded. Its eyes were bugging out of its acidic green skin, and it kept croaking miserably at Pete.

“I’m just trying to make it hold still!” Joe said. “Fuck, man, he’s slippery.”

“That’s what she said,” Pete said, and Joe glared at him. Pete chuckled to himself as they rounded yet another corner to find Andy and Patrick.

“Hey, we’ve got your prince,” Joe said, and Patrick turned around looking relieved, then slightly nervous.

“Oh. Wow, um, that’s a frog,” he said. He leaned back, apprehension vivid on his face. 

“Yep, that’s the story of the frog prince,” Joe said, “You kiss a frog, get a prince, we getting on with this?”

Patrick bit his lip.

“I just… I don’t know, didn’t expect him to look so… wet.”

“It’s a frog, and it’s slippery in my hands,” Joe said. “Worst case scenario is that it doesn’t turn into a hot dude and we have to find another frog. You can even brush your teeth afterwards if you want. Please just kiss it.”

“Ugh, ew, okay, just give me a second,” Patrick said, cringing away from the frog. “Oh fuck, I don’t want to kiss it.”

“Motherfucker,” Joe growled, his grip on the frog tightening. “If you do not kiss this goddamn amphibian-”

“Fine!” Patrick shouted, leaning forward and smashing his mouth against the frog and pulling back at once, wiping his mouth off on his hand. Pete looked down at the frog in Joe’s hands and watched as it started shaking. 

“I think you should let go of him,” Pete said quietly, and Joe dropped the frog, watching it glow a bright gold and start growing as it fell.

A flash of light blew out from frog, and when Pete’s eyes adjusted again, he saw a man. Pete’s first thought was that the prince standing in front of him was gorgeous. His second thought was that the prince wasn’t wearing any more clothes as a prince than he was as a frog.

“Oh, wow,” Joe turned away at once, looking down and away from the guy. “Well, that was fast.”

“My lord!” the prince gasped, running towards Patrick. Patrick looked panicked as the man grasped Patrick’s head in his hands and kissed him again, but he seemed to settle into the kiss quickly.

The prince was beautiful. He was blonde and angelic looking, flawless in every way that Pete could see, though in the same generically beautiful way that the princesses had looked. Unlike the waify thinness of the princesses, though, the prince was muscular, so toned he looked like he was sculpted out of stone.

“Damn,” Pete muttered.

“You gonna look away?” Joe asked.

“Uh-huh, in a bit,” Pete said absentmindedly. 

“Pete!” Joe hissed.

“My lord,” the prince breathed, kissing down Patrick’s neck, “You saved me.”

“Um,” Patrick inhaled sharply as the Prince’s hand started travelling lower ahead of his mouth. “Um, maybe we could,  _ fuck _ , go somewhere else?”

The prince sprang backward, all of the front of him now visible. 

“I live to serve you, sire,” he said. Andy looked like he was snickering, but Pete was still staring at Patrick and the prince. Suddenly, Patrick’s eyes had the dark, heavy look in them Pete had just been imagining, and he felt breathless.

“Do you?” Patrick asked. He turned and pulled a door open to reveal a large closet with a few cleaning supplies in it, then met Pete’s eyes. Pete was horrified for a second that Patrick could tell what Pete was thinking, but it seemed that Patrick was just as one track minded as he was.

“Guard the door for me?” he pleaded. Pete nodded numbly, and Patrick tugged the prince into the closet by his wrist, slamming the door behind the two of them. Joe let out a chuckle.

“Not into dudes my ass,” he said. “He doesn’t look that hungry when he’s starving to death.” 

He walked away, Andy following after. “Have fun watching the door!” Andy called, and Pete looked back at the door, his heart sinking into his stomach as he heard someone groan.

“Am I being punished?” he asked aloud in a whisper. He could hear Patrick moaning in the room just behind him and it wasn’t making his job all that easy. This wasn’t how he intended on hearing Patrick have sex, but god, it sounded just as amazing as Pete had always thought it would. Patrick was a vocal creature and he sounded like- well, Pete didn’t have words.

At the same time, he really didn’t want to hear how much someone else got to enjoy his Patrick. 

The second Pete saw a familiar face walking down the hall, he was ready to leave.

“Hey, Gabe, do me a favor and stand outside of this door until it opens, okay?” Pete said, pushing Gabe into position and walking away at once.

“Why?” Gabe asked warily.

“ _ FUCK! _ ” Patrick gasped from behind the door. Pete could feel a throbbing between his legs.

“Just do it?” Pete said, and he ran in the other direction. He first stopped in the bathroom to try and hastily take care of how turned on he was, only to hear a girl ask him if he was sure he was in the right bathroom almost as soon as he had a hand on his dick.

By the time Pete got back to Patrick and Andy’s bus, he realized that it was past time for soundcheck to start, but he had other plans. He pulled the mystery storybook closer to him and flipped through it, briefly catching sight of the stupidly blonde, stupidly smiling prince back in his rightful place under the Frog Prince chapter. But Pete was focused on the Prince in all of the princess chapters, another inanely smiling blonde man that, on closer inspection, looked absolutely nothing like Patrick.

Pete had two theories, one more likely than the other, but he wasn’t sure he was up for calling his father so soon after his last encounter. Instead of going into the bathroom to use the mirror, he pulled out his phone and called a number he hadn’t needed to use in a while. Five minutes later he felt strangely accomplished as he hung up, which was excellent timing, as Patrick climbed onto the bus at just that moment looking pissed.

“You left me with Gabe?” he asked, his lips pulled back over his teeth. Patrick’s angry face was diminished slightly by the red still clinging to his cheeks and his mussed hair.

“I had to work on something else,” Pete said, and he slid the book across the table to Patrick. “I figured out what’s up with you.”

“Is it my super annoying bassist?” Patrick asked.

“No, I called your mom,” Pete said. Patrick looked taken aback. “I figured she might’ve been into genealogy, because, you know, all moms are, and as it turns out, you’re very, very distantly descended from German royalty.” Pete couldn’t help but look proud of himself. “Congratulations, Rick, you’re a prince.”

Patrick looked unimpressed.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“I thought it was cool,” Pete said, trying not to look offended.

“Sorry,” Patrick sighed. “Long week.”

“What’ve you got to complain about?” Pete laughed bitterly.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Patrick lied. Hit with another wave of unexpected guilt, Pete leaned back, then scooted over at the table, making space for Patrick. Patrick looked wary, but he sat down anyway, leaning his head on his hands.

“It’s hard to enjoy the mindless sex thing when everyone knows about it, for one thing,” Patrick said, then made a face. “I mean, I expect a little bit of jeering. But not this much.”

Pete opened his mouth to apologize, but Patrick went on.

“Also, I thought it would be nice to be the chosen one for just this once, but it sort of feels like a joke,” he said. “And also… I’m the right size to slay a dragon too.”

Pete had sort of seen that one coming.

“I think everyone’s just worried about you being safe,” he said. “I mean, shit, dude, I am. We can get another bassist, but your voice is one of a kind.” He grinned at Patrick, and Patrick rolled his eyes, but smiled back at him.

“You’re the better fighter, dude,” Pete said. “But you also have a bit of a hero complex. I know when to call it quits. But we can order you your fireproof suit too, just in case.”

“Thanks,” Patrick said. “I guess that’s all I can ask for. So, sound check?”

“Sound check,” Pete agreed solemnly. Patrick’s hand brushed against his shoulder and Pete’s heart leapt into his throat. He should say it, he realized, he should talk to Patrick now, while he had the chance.

“Trick,” Pete began, only to feel his phone buzz in his pocket. He yanked it out and slid it open, in a hurry to get back to his conversation, when he saw a text from Ryan.

“ _ dont say anything to patrick yet. we need to talk. _ ”

“Yeah?” Patrick said. Pete swallowed hard. He hated oracles slightly more than he hated princesses, he decided suddenly.

“I’ll tell you later,” Pete said. Patrick gave him a strange look but let the way back out of the bus while Pete felt anxiety building up in him like rot. What the hell could Ryan have to say to him that would involve his issue with Patrick?

Pete was still musing over this when Sola rushed up to meet them, an apologetic look on her face.

“Hey, Patrick? Um, there’s a girl inside who’s looking for her shoe… I think she wants you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking with me, guys! I feel like I have a lot to say, but I can't think of anything right now, so I hope all of you enjoyed the chapter, and I'll see you soon with more! let me know what you thought <3
> 
> Song title by Saxon


	11. Cupid's Chokehold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete finds out what the problem is with Ryan. While dealing with the emotional turmoil caused by the revelation, he gets a very strange curse put on him. It doesn't take long for the curse to start spreading all through the tour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual warnings for blood apply, but this is also a fairly peterick heavy chapter, so... you've been warned

            “Patrick? I feel weird.”

            Patrick pushed his laptop over on the bed and looked up at Pete over the tops of his glasses. He surveyed him silently, seeing, Pete was sure, that he _looked_ weird. Pete saw himself in the mirror as he came over, and he knew his face was blotchy with hectic red spots, his eyes were too bright.

            “C’mere,” Patrick said, patting the bedspread next to him. Pete flopped down, tucking his feet up underneath himself at once and leaning his head on Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick ran his hands through Pete’s hair, scratching his scalp lightly, with the small blunt edges of his squared off nails. Pete let out a hum of contentment, feeling the muscles in his stomach start to loosen.

            “Does this sound okay to you?” Patrick asked.

            Patrick hit the spacebar with his thumb, and Pete heard muffled sounds coming out of the enormous headphones he was almost lying on top of.

            “Oh, shit, sorry,” Patrick said, yanking audio cord out of the computer. He hit the spacebar again and the back room of the bus filled with a swell of familiar electronic music interwoven with Patrick’s vocalizations. Pete hummed again, letting his head rest against Patrick’s shoulder.

            “Cobra?” Pete asked.

            “Mmm-hmm,” Patrick said. He pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. “Tweaking the outro. How does it sound?”

            “Sounds good,” Pete said. “Damn good. But you know,” he grinned at Patrick, “Gabe is technically the singer for that band.”

            Patrick swatted at Pete, pausing the music again.

            “Dick. It’s just a placeholder for now, unless Gabe decides he wants to keep it. Does it sound alright?”

            “Not even a little. That’s a hell of a lot better than all right,” Pete said, feeling his heart thud too hard in his chest as Patrick’s aura shone with pleasure. “Remember, you’re not allowed to make their album sound better than our next one.”

            “Trust me, I wouldn’t,” Patrick said. “I’ve got way too much pride for that.” He scrutinized Pete, finally raising his eyebrows in question.

            “I don’t know what’s up,” Pete said. “Too many people? Not enough people? My skin feels too tight and I can’t sit still. And it’s not like I have time to talk to a therapist or something. Can you imagine? ‘Any stress lately, Mr. Wentz?’ ‘Oh, well, you know, my demon dad is holding all my fans hostage, so I’m learning how to slay a dragon.’”

            “Yeah, somehow I don’t think psychosis drugs would help your problems right now,” Patrick said, not quite biting back a smile. “Did anything happen?”

            “Tense, mostly,” Pete said. He pressed himself a little closer to Patrick, luxuriating in the deep breaths he could take next to him.

            Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Pete had, in the past day and a half since Ryan’s text, tried calling Ryan eighteen times. Then he called Brendon ten times, Spencer nine, and Jon five. None of them had answered, because, of course, they were all still locked in a cabin in remote Nevada. Ryan had texted him back once, with the elaboration: “ _there was a prophecy. no signal rn. talk later.”_

            As if that was remotely helpful. Pete had sent quite a few texts in response, but Ryan hadn’t replied again. Pete didn’t know what any of that could mean. If Ryan had seen that Pete was in love with Patrick—because apparently it was obvious to everyone in the world except Patrick—then he must have seen something going wrong, or he wouldn’t have stopped Pete. So Pete was all caught up in worry that if he couldn’t quash this feeling, then he was going to break up his band. Ironically, the only thing that made him feel better was being next to Patrick.

            “You wanna do something?” Patrick asked. Pete looked up at him, eyebrows drawn together in surprise.

            “We’ve been so caught up on tour and with all this magic bullshit, I just,” Patrick shrugged, shutting the laptop again. “I don’t wanna be one of those bands where we just barely tolerate each other enough to work together. We should do something fun for once, you know?”

            “You asking me out on a date?” Pete asked, his smile mocking. Patrick rolled his eyes.

            “Yeah, sure, dinner and a movie, just don’t expect me to put out, jackass,” he said. “You wanted to see that Neil Gaiman thing, right?”

            “You remembered,” Pete said, trying not to show how delighted he felt by that.

            “It’s almost like I live with you or something,” Patrick said. “Anyway. You busy this afternoon?”

            “Apparently, I have a movie date,” Pete said. He thought he vaguely remembered plans to spend more time with Ashlee, but that could be rearranged.

            “So, you want to-”

            Patrick was unable to finish his sentence as Pete’s phone started ringing. Pete didn’t even stop to apologize as he rolled off the bed, answering the phone as he ran to the front of the bus and straight outside into the glaringly bright sun.

            “Ryan?” he demanded, his heart slamming in his chest.

            “Damn, you really don’t get that whole ‘middle of nowhere’ thing, do you?” Ryan’s voice sounded lazily amused.

            “ _Ryan_ ,” Pete growled. Ryan sighed, the line crackling with his breath.

            “Look, I had a prophecy. Kind of,” Ryan said.

            “Kind of?” Pete said.

            “Not kind of, I did make a prophecy, but I made it, like, ages and ages ago,” Ryan said. He paused. “Like, I was a little kid. My dad wrote it down. But it’s about you guys.”

            “Me and Patrick?” Pete asked.

            “No, Fall Out Boy. All four of you. But it’s kind of a long prophecy and the majority of it is just describing that you guys exist, so I never thought much of it, except… Well, the other day I saw that you were going to say something to Patrick.”

            “You were spying on us?” Pete asked, without any real venom in the question.

            “No! It’s involuntary, and anyways—look, there are a couple of lines in the prophecy that I didn’t understand when I first made it, but I think they have to do with you and Patrick.”

            “And?” Pete asked.

            “I really don’t like prophesying over the phone…”

“Get to the point,” Pete snapped.

            “Okay, okay, Jesus. _When love requited starts to rise/ ‘tween man and myth with glowing eyes/ the story meets with bitter end/ two lovers better off as friends/ a darkness spreads across the land/ and fae will lead to the fall of man._ ”

            Pete froze in shock.

            “‘Fae will lead to the fall of man’?” he repeated.

            “So goes the prophecy,” Ryan said. He sounded almost pitying. “And, I mean, it might not mean anything sinister. People misread prophecies all the time.”

            “How many meanings are there to ‘bitter end’?” Pete asked dully. The anxious twist in his chest had been replaced by a dull ache of fear. _Fae will lead to the fall of man_.

            Ryan made a sympathetic noise.

            “So what you’re getting at is that I shouldn’t say anything,” Pete said.

            “Well, I mean, I guess that’s up to you two. I don’t know how he feels either, so maybe it’s not requited,” Ryan said.

            “Thanks a lot, dude,” Pete said, the sarcasm in his voice just barely holding back any embarrassment. “But you know what? That’s really not fucking helpful.”

            Pete slid his phone shut and leaned back against the hot metal of the bus. His hands were shaking, he realized idly. So what, then? He either pushed down whatever he was feeling or he killed Patrick? That wasn’t even a question. There was no decision to make. There were plenty of things in the world that could make Patrick happy, plenty of people who could make him happy. And Pete… he would get over it someday. Or, if not, he’d rather be friends with a living Patrick. The decision was painful, but it was easy.

            “Hey.”

            Patrick was sticking his head out of the door of the bus, his eyebrows furrowed.

            “You okay?” he asked. Pete swallowed hard.

            “You know me,” he said, as close as he could get to saying he was fine without lying. Patrick shot him a smile that seemed to say he knew what Pete meant, but wouldn’t call him out on it. Pete’s chest constricted.

            “C’mon, three o’clock showing, I bet we could even give security the slip,” Patrick said.

            The movie was good, Pete thought, though he hadn’t been able to pay it much attention, with Patrick sitting right next to him. He was aware enough to realize that the movie had turned the narrative into more of a love story than he remembered the book being. As the music swelled and the main characters kissed, he felt his stomach dip even lower in his torso, and he sunk down in the theater chair. He definitely could have lived without the happily ever after today.

            Pete must have looked almost as miserable as he was, because Patrick kept shooting him worried glances when he thought Pete wasn’t looking. He initiated a lot of touching— leaning on Pete’s shoulder or smoothing the fabric on his shoulder. Ordinarily, this would have made Pete ecstatic, but today the sickness in his gut just grew heavier.

            “You can tell me about it, you know,” Patrick said, with an unusual amount of earnest understanding that he rarely displayed outside of a studio. Pete forced a smile.

            “Thanks,” he said lamely, and he leaned into Patrick’s willing arms. He didn’t want to touch Patrick. He wanted to put as much physical distance between the two of them as possible to keep him safe, to prevent whatever “the fall of man” was from happening, but Patrick was irresistible. Pete was drawn to him like a magnet.

            Pete ditched Patrick as soon as they got back to the venue. He couldn’t remember if he actually said anything to Patrick, if he came up with a lame excuse, or if he just walked away from Patrick as soon as they were out of the car. He was certain he had hurt Patrick’s feelings either way, but he didn’t care. He wanted to be alone.

            Unfortunately, he was also still Pete Wentz.

            “Pete,” Marcus’ voice was full of reprimand, promising to tear Pete apart for disappearing for a few hours. But when Pete turned around with a snarl, Marcus just gave him a knowing nod and walked the other way. Pete knew he’d still probably be in trouble later.

            Gabe tried to grab him next, as he was walking through the labyrinthine venue, then Joe, but Pete walked past them wordlessly, the prophecy still echoing in his head.

            Should he just quit the band? The guys would murder him, probably, but Patrick already had production credit under his belt, and Joe and Andy were both talented musicians. They could move on and do other things. Pete could stay away, if he needed to.

            While he mused, Pete didn’t pay attention to where he was wandering, and he bumped into a fan leaving the restroom, her eyes popping when she saw him.

            “Oh my god, you’re Pete Wentz,” she said. Pete tried his very hardest not to look annoyed, but he was already suppressing quite a few emotions, and wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d actually rolled his eyes.

            “That’s me,” he said, voice flat.

            “I’m just- wow, I can’t believe I’m meeting you,” she said. “Do you have to go?”

            Well, Pete didn’t have to be anywhere, but he didn’t know how to talk around it.

            “I was going somewhere else,” he said brusquely. The girl didn’t actually look that let down. In fact, there was something in her large blueish-purple eyes that was almost gleeful.

            “Well, I can’t wait for the show tonight!” she said, and stretched out her hand for a handshake. Fans, Pete decided, got weirder everyday, but it was better than a bone crushing hug and snot on his shirt, so he shook her hand once and continued storming off, his mind swirling with indecision.

            Pete stepped back outside on the other side of the venue and felt the sun hit his face. He felt warm, and a little bit calmer. No, he couldn’t just leave the band, couldn’t force himself away from Patrick or Fall Out Boy like that. He could, of course, just talk to Patrick, but somehow he didn’t see that working out. _“Hey, I’m in love with you but if we ever get together you’re going to die,”_ wasn’t his idea of a great opener.

            So, he could keep doing what he was doing. There were no other good options as far as Pete could tell. The idea of putting distance between himself and Patrick put a big lump in his throat, but a little distance now was more than a fair trade for Patrick’s life.

            The idea of keeping himself away from Patrick should have ruined Pete’s day, but while Pete thought it through in the heavy summer sun, he felt suddenly lighter, not quite happier, but excited somehow. Very, weirdly excited. It felt sort of like Pete’s blood was turning into soda, all carbonation and fizzing under his skin.

            Distantly, Pete realized something was wrong. Kill your best friend or never fall in love shouldn’t make him feel like he had eaten fifteen packets of PopRocks.

            Pete bounced on the balls of his feet, a hysterical smile spreading on his face. He was _excited_ , more than that, he was _absolutely fucking pumped_. He wanted to blow up a building, take over the world, make out with Patrick, punch a journalist in the face, streak through the crowd of fans still waiting in line on the other side of the venue.

            “Pete?”

            “DIRTY!” Pete crowed. He spun around and tackled Dirty, both of them falling over. Dirty swore profusely, but Pete was giggling, shaking his hands through Dirty’s hair in some weird approximation of a noogie. “WHAT’S UP?” Pete yelled.

            “Ow, Jesus Christ, get off of me, fucker!” Dirty groaned. He pushed Pete off of him, and Pete rolled onto his back on the ground, cackling with his knees pulled up to his chest. His chest ached hollowly, hungrily, like he was thirsty for something and didn’t know what.

            “Jesus fuck, dude, Gabe said you were upset,” Dirty sounded almost betrayed while he pulled himself to his feet. Pete was still on his back, barely breathing for how hard he was laughing. Pete gasped, all of his nerve endings buzzing, electric.

            “Are you okay?” he asked, now sounding concerned.

            Pete lurched up from his position on the ground and grabbed Dirty by the collar.

            “WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING COOL FOR THE FANS!” Pete shouted. “GET THE T-SHIRT GUN, WE’RE GOING TO SNIPE THEM WITH SIGNATURES.”

            “Um.” Dirty looked frightened, Pete realized, but the realization was distant. “Pete, what’s wrong with you?”

            “OR WE COULD SEE HOW MANY ROOMS WE CAN LIGHT ON FIRE BEFORE WE GET CAUGHT,” Pete yelled. “OR I COULD GO MAKE OUT WITH PATRICK.”

            “Dude, you are acting excessively peculiar,” Dirty said. “Should I, like, call for help?”

            “STAY WITH ME!” Pete cried, clasping Dirty’s hand in his. “COME ON! DON’T YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING STUPID?”

            Dirty looked hazy. Whatever fear was in his eyes was melting away and slowly getting replaced with something that looked like excitement.

            “Kinda… yeah,” he said. A part of him still looked confused, but he also looked eager. Pete felt himself eager, wildly eager, but some part of the back of his mind was aware that whatever was happening wasn’t normal.

            “DO YOU THINK THAT WE CAN FIND NAPALM ANYWHERE NEAR? NEVERMIND, WE JUST NEED GASOLINE AND FROZEN ORANGE JUICE,” Pete was bouncing, vibrating. “COME WITH ME.”

            Pete grabbed Dirty’s hand and started running, not sure of where he was going. He let go and did a cartwheel.

            “IS THERE A HOTEL NEAR HERE? I HAVE BUBBLE BATH IN MY BUS AND IF WE RENT A ROOM WE CAN FILL THE HOT TUB WITH IT! OR WE COULD-”

            Pete was interrupted by stumbling into Patrick, catching himself by anchoring his hand on Patrick’s neck. He was giggling.

            “Pete?” Patrick looked alarmed.

            “Patty-Patty-Trick-Pat,” Pete sang. “Lunchbox. Stumpster.”

            “I—you—the fuck kind of nickname is ‘Lunchbox’?” Patrick asked, blinking at Pete.

            “I love you,” Pete gushed, and he fell against Patrick again, this time grabbing the sides of Patrick’s face and mashing his lips against his. He pressed his tongue through Patrick’s lips, ignoring the muffled noise of protest Patrick made, and he twisted his fingers in Patrick’s hair, knocking his hat off.

            _This_ was kissing Patrick, but it was not the blissful experience he had expected. It was very wet and Patrick was holding himself very, very still.

            And then Patrick kneed him in the groin.

            Pete rolled backwards, cupping his hands over his crotch as he started tearing up. For a moment, his head was clear of everything but pain and he had enough sense to wonder what the hell he was doing.

            “Jesus,” Pete groaned. “Oh, fuck.”

            “WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?” Patrick roared. He was very red faced—unusually red, actually, blushing more than Pete had ever seen him before, and his hat was back on.

            “I’m not actually sure,” Pete said. He gave Patrick a worried look, then hobbled back over to him, latching himself to Patrick’s side. He felt magnetic, constantly drawn to Patrick’s side, and the closer he was, the better he felt. “I think something’s wrong with me.” His hand began snaking up Patrick’s shirt, and Patrick squawked, swatting his hand away. “Sorry. I was gonna go blow up the venue, wanna help me make napalm?”

            Patrick stared at Pete in dismay. He swatted Pete’s arm away from his chest yet again. He then pushed Pete’s face away from his, as Pete’s mouth was getting unnervingly close to his neck. Pete whined, but didn’t blame Patrick either.

            “This,” Patrick paused between each word, “Seems like a magic problem. Um. It’s either a magic problem or you’ve tried cocaine. Which makes me feel like I should call Gabe, Andy, and Dr. Ferrum in that order either way. Does that sound alright?”

            “Pat-er-ick,” Pete clung to his shirt. None of those names were Patrick’s, and the idea of getting separated from Patrick made Pete’s stomach turn. “No. C’mon. I wanna have an adventure with you.” He brushed an eyelash off of Patrick’s cheek and Patrick grabbed his wrist firmly, shaking his head.

            “I think this is adventure enough,” Patrick said. His cheeks were still a bright, sunburned shade of red. His eyes also seemed bluer than usual, but maybe Pete was just seeing him differently. Everything about Patrick seemed a little sharper, a little more pointed. “Also, was that a no to calling for help, or a ‘no’ as in no you didn’t try cocaine?”

            “I didn’t do drugs!” Pete said, a flicker of real offense shining through the weirdness that was controlling him. “And I don’t want anyone but you.” He licked a stripe up the side of Patrick’s cheek, and Patrick shoved him. Hard.

            “Great. Super. As long as you didn’t do drugs.” Pete thought Patrick might have been sarcastic, but he wasn’t sure. Everything seemed sort of shiny through his eyes, the whole world glittering like diamonds. “So we’re going to go find Gabe and try to figure out… whatever did happen.” Patrick eyed Pete warily.

            “I love you,” Pete said, pressing his face into Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick smelled like sweat, sunscreen, and dirty laundry, but Pete was kind of loving it.

            “I’ve heard,” Patrick said, sounding weary. He wrapped his arm around Pete’s chest and started marching him away.

            “Where are you taking me, lunchbox? The bedroom?” Pete leered at Patrick as best he could.

            “Mmm-hmm,” Patrick said distractedly. He had his phone out and was trying, with very little success, to text someone one handed. His fingers that were usually so adept with guitars and GarageBand looked thick and clumsy as he tried to maneuver around the SideKick keyboard. Pete tried to look at what he was typing, but he couldn’t focus on the screen. Instead, he found himself staring at Patrick’s fingers, longing to feel them in his hair, to suck on them…

            There still was a part of Pete’s mind that knew that this wasn’t normal. If he was absolutely consumed with longing for Patrick every time he looked at him, his life would be pretty fucking miserable. But now, even with the electricity burning in his veins and the throbbing in his crotch, he still enjoyed the tingling in his lips where he had kissed Patrick. He felt warm and happy with Patrick’s arm around him. This was too comforting to worry about what was wrong.

            “Right,” Patrick slid his phone back into his pocket and started dragging Pete forward again. “We’re going to go find Gabe and William and see if they can put you back to normal.

            “I don’t want to go anywhere!” Pete whined. “I wanna stay with you, Patty.”

            “I take it back: Lunchbox is fine, even if it’s stupid,” Patrick muttered, almost too low for Pete to hear. Patrick’s phone chirped again, and he made a pained face. He pulled it out, looking mournful, and Pete could see Vicky’s name at the top of the screen.

            Jealousy burned through Pete like fire. What did Victoria Asher have that he didn’t have? Other than tits, better hair, mental stability, and a good six inches on him? Stupid pretty girl. Pete suddenly hated her.

            “You know, if you need to be somewhere else, I can take care of Pete for you,” Dirty said, using his ‘concerned chaperone’ voice. Pete turned to glare at him, because the last thing he wanted was to be treated like a kid and pulled away from Patrick, but Dirty winked hugely at him. Pete’s stomach did an excited backflip. This meant _adventure_.

            “Can you?” Patrick asked gratefully. He physically passed Pete into Dirty’s arms, and Pete fell onto him obligingly, inhaling the familiar sweaty, smoky scent of his best friend. “Just head towards Cobra’s bus, I gave G-Gabe a heads up,” Patrick said, stumbling slightly over Gabe’s name. “T-text me if you need me.”

            Dirty waved until Patrick was out of sight, then turned back to Pete, eyes gleaming with mirth.

            “I saw a Walmart on our way into town,” he said. “If we leave right now, we can be back with frozen orange juice and gasoline before the first band goes on. You sure that’s what napalm is made out of?”

            “Of course I am! I read it in Fight Club!” Pete said indignantly. Dirty grinned wider. Just as he and Pete started running in the opposite direction, Pete crumpled down onto the ground.

            Face down in the grass, Pete started gasping for air, but it felt like his lungs had collapsed in on themselves. Completely out of nowhere, he felt a sudden and crushing sense of grief, as though someone had died. Pete clutched at the pain in his chest, but it did nothing. He could hear, distantly, what sounded like Dirty saying his name over and over again, but Pete couldn’t respond, couldn’t do anything but curl up on the ground with his knees against his chest. He slammed his eyes shut, the sun suddenly blinding and awful. He ached with loss, and though a voice in the back of his head was shrieking that nothing was wrong, he couldn’t stop trembling.

            Pete thought that maybe Dirty had left, as he couldn’t hear anyone else talking anymore. He was stuck alone, wrapped in all consuming grief. It didn’t feel like depression, it didn’t feel like the flat emptiness that depression was supposed to be, it felt like he had just gone through an earth-shattering tragedy.

            “I don’t know what happened to him!” he heard Dirty say, his voice panicked. Pete winced, his hands clenched into tight fists, but he didn’t make any attempts to stand up.

            “And Patrick left him like this?” Anger was plain in Gabe’s voice, but Dirty spoke up before Pete had to summon the energy to defend Patrick’s honor.

            “ _No_ , he was acting weird, but a different kind of weird? Sort of the opposite, he was all hyper and bouncy just a minute ago!”

            “Is he hurt?” Gabe sounded dubious.

            “Everything hurts,” Pete murmured, whimpering slightly, to his extreme embarrassment.

            A shadow blocked the heavy sun from hitting him, and Pete’s muscles loosened, just slightly, as he felt someone looming over him. He didn’t open his eyes, but he felt a hand resting on his forehead, and it felt cool and safe.

            “Talk to me,” Gabe said, low and serious.

            “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Pete said. He was still on his side, but he started rocking, just slightly. “Like, more wrong than usual, much more. Like mental illness on fucking speed. And I can’t control myself. And everything hurts right now.”

            “It’s gonna be okay,” Gabe said, comforting because it wasn’t a lie, because Pete knew he meant it. He wriggled closer to Gabe, and tentatively opened his eyes. Gabe looked relieved, and he pushed Pete’s hair back again, clinging tightly to his shoulder, the physical contact a comfort.

            'No te preocupes, averiguaremos que está pasando y lo arreglaremos,' Gabe said, his tone unchanging, logical and simple, even though Pete had no idea what he was saying. Pete chuckled weakly.

            “I don’t think I remember enough high school Spanish for that,” he said. Gabe frowned, cocking his head slightly.

            'No estoy hablando Español,' Gabe said in Spanish. Pete stared at Gabe, feeling lost. The aching hollowness in his chest had not subsided, but the back part of him, the part that still felt like him, was entirely confused. He recognized some of the words…

            “Did you say… did you say you’re not speaking Spanish? Because you definitely are,” Pete said. Gabe looked indignant.

            'No estoy hablando Español, estúpido. Es esto algún tipo de broma? Porque no es gracioso y no tiene ningún sentido.' Pete stared at him blankly.

            “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, and for some reason this made him feel tearful. He swiped at the moisture in his eyes, and hunched his shoulders forward to feel more grounded.

            '¡Estoy hablando Ingles!' Gabe growled. He turned to Dirty in frustration. '¿Vos me podes escuchar hablando en Ingles, no?'

            “I’m sorry, dude, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Dirty said. Gabe, for one of the first times since Pete met him, looked very close to losing his cool.

            'Pete, por favor tomate esto en serio y decime que pasa,' Gabe sounded pleading. Pete shrugged.

            “I don’t… I don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, miserable. He wrapped his arms protectively around his chest, as if he could physically hold himself together. He wished he weren’t so weepy. He also sort of wished he had a notebook. He felt like he could write something decent out of this.

            'Bueno,’ Gabe took a deep breath. ‘Tenemos que resolver esto. No entiendo completamente que esta pasando, pero claramente es algo que tiene que ver con magia. Por lo menos todavía puedo hablar y no soy una serpiente de mierda esta vez. Bill es bastante bueno con magia, deberíamos ir a hablar con él, creo. Hablaremos con él, tal vez tendremos una reunión del tour para ver que pasa conmigo y Pete, y si eso no funciona,  
alguien llame a Ryan. Ryan tuvo que haber visto algo, no?'

            Pete and Dirty stared blankly at him.

            “Um, yeah, whatever you say, man,” Dirty said, shrugging. Gabe let out an angry huff.

            'Vamos,' he snapped, and he yanked Pete to his feet, half-dragging him towards the buses. Pete was starting to feel increasingly like a ragdoll, getting pulled everywhere he went.

            Pete’s phone started ringing, and Gabe stopped marching and waited for Pete to answer. Pete didn’t feel like he had the life in him to answer, and after a minute of waiting, Gabe made an angry noise, and Dirty fished the phone out of Pete’s pocket and answered it.

            “Pete’s phone,” he said. “Yeah? Mmm-hmm. Yeah, we’re kind of in the middle of a Pete related crisis, actually. No, no, he’s, um, well he’s not fine, but, ah, he could be worse?”

            Pete didn’t feel like he could be worse, but he didn’t protest.

            “Hmm? Look, dude, now really isn’t the time. Yeah, I’ll let them know. Okay, bye.” Dirty hung up, looking nervous.

            “That was Dan. We’ve got a bit of a vampire problem,” he said.

            'Los vampiros son la menor de nuestras preocupaciones justo ahora,' Gabe said. Pete shrugged.

            “What he said,” Pete said dully, and Gabe stormed into the parking lot.

***

            Andy was having a perfectly normal day when Pete ruined it. Story of his life.

            Of course, the day’s weirdness started with Patrick. Andy had been reading stories to Carmilla. The normal kind, ones where little girls were strong protagonists that never needed to fall in love, and no princesses came out of the pages to sleep with his singer. Some time in the middle of the afternoon, Patrick and Vicky ran onto the bus, giggling like teenagers. When they saw him, they burst into another fit of laughter, and both of them blushed. Granted, Patrick looked a sort of unhealthy shade of red, more pink like he’d spend a day in the sun than pink like he was mildly embarrassed, but Patrick was pale enough that Andy didn’t think much of it. He just rolled his eyes pointedly, and the Patrick grabbed Vicky’s hand, tugging her to the back of the bus.

            “What’s uncle Pattick doing?” Carmilla asked, tugging on Andy’s sleeve.

            “He and Victoria are on a playdate,” Andy said tonelessly. “Do you want a drink?”

            “Yeah!” she cried, and Andy warmed up a sippy cup full of blood for her. Maybe he ought to have taken Carmilla outside, what with her super-sensitive hearing and all, but he wasn’t too fussed. Andy had shared a lot of buses and vans with a lot of inconsiderate guys, but as far as sex went, Patrick and Victoria were both very polite and well versed in tour etiquette. There was no shrieking and loud grunting at two in the morning, no drunk ripping Andy’s curtain aside and demanding a condom, and no handcuffs hastily stuffed into Andy’s bag rather than Joe’s. They made a bit more noise when they thought Andy wasn’t on the bus, and Andy could, of course, still hear what they were doing, but he appreciated the effort that would have worked on a human. In any case, his daughter was too young to know what the sound was, and he assumed she would just think it was like any other background noise.

            However, unlike the usual routine, after about fifteen minutes or so, Victoria stormed to the front of the bus, her face set in a hard scowl and her hair barely mussed.

            “Everything all right?” Andy asked cautiously. Victoria huffed and rolled her eyes.

            “It didn’t work, if you must know,” she said. Andy’s eyes widened in mild surprise.

            “What, could he not, erm, get it up?” he asked, his voice lowered. He didn’t know why on earth Victoria would tell him if that were the case, but he was morbidly curious.

            “No,” Victoria rolled her eyes again. “It just—wouldn’t work.” She sounded oddly sarcastic, though the words seemed sincere enough.

            “What do you mean?” Andy’s eyes narrowed. Patrick followed out of the back room before she could respond.

            “I’m really s-s-sorry,” he stuttered out. “I d-don’t know what’s g-going on here,” Patrick said, sounding frustrated.

            “Yeah, whatever, it’s not your fault,” Victoria said, looking off into a corner. Andy jerked back in surprise at the venom in her tone, and didn’t blame Patrick for looking hurt.

            “L-look, I don’t know wh-what’s going on,” Patrick said, indignant.

            “I know, I’m not blaming you,” Victoria said, sounding like she meant the opposite. A look of frustration flashed across her face. “I’m not trying to sound bitchy here,” she said, while rolling her eyes.

            “What happened?” Andy asked. Patrick flushed an alarming shade of red, and looked down at the floor.

            “I c-can’t t-take my c-c-clothes off,” he tripped over the words. Andy raised one eyebrow.

            “Is this a joke?” he asked.

            “NO!” Patrick and Vicky yelled at the same time.

            “L-look,” Patrick said. He pulled his shirt over his head, and Andy noticed idly that it did nothing to shift the baseball cap on his head that probably should have fallen off. Patrick then tugged on the waistband of his jeans to no effect.

            “Okay, so that doesn’t prove anything,” Andy said.

            “You t-try it,” Patrick said.

            “I don’t really want to,” Andy said mildly. Giggling, Carmilla tugged on Patrick’s pants leg, and the didn’t move. Cautiously, Andy reached out and pulled, but the fabric was completely immobile.

            “So that might be a little strange,” Andy said after a moment of silence. “Um. Is there anything else?”

            “I’m having difficulty expressing sincerity,” Vicky said, voice flat.

            “I can see that,” Andy said.

            “And I’m h-having t-trouble t-t-talking,” Patrick said. “I can’t st-stop f-freaking stuttering.”

            Andy snorted, and the two of them glared at him.

            “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just… ‘freaking’?”

            “I d-didn’t mean to s-say freaking,” Patrick was blushing that concerning shade of red still. “I meant t-to say f-f-f-fu-fracking.” He looked mortified and furious. Andy let out another snort.

            “You can’t swear?” he asked.

            “Sh-sh-shut the f-fudge up!” Patrick cried. Andy let out a full blown laugh from his stomach, his eyes tearing up.

            “Give it a rest, fuckface, this is serious,” Victoria said, still sounding bored, though her eyes were alight with real anger.

            “I’m sorry,” Andy said. He bit his lip, but couldn’t help smiling. “I know, I know it’s serious. What do you think happened?” He paused. “Also, um, Patrick? Your hair is kind of orange.”

            Patrick made a distressed noise and ran into the bathroom to check.

            “Any idea what could be going on?” Andy asked.

            “You’re the magic ones,” Vicky sounded painfully bored, and Andy held his hands up. “Again, not trying to be a bitch,” her voice was emotionless, as was her blank face, but Andy nodded, tried to take it in stride.

            “Okay, so,” Patrick walked out of the bathroom, his hair a bright shade of orange underneath his hat, “M-maybe this h-has something to do with P-p-pete,” Patrick suggested.

            “Yeah?” Andy asked. Patrick nodded.

            “H-he was acting w-weird,” Patrick said. His voice was a little softer, a little meeker, but Andy decided not to point it out and trigger one of his easy, cherry-red blushes. “K-kind of manic, b-but….” Patrick trailed off.

            “Bigger,” he said eventually. A loud sucking noise near the ground drew Andy’s attention back down to Carmilla, still holding her sippy cup in both hands.

            “Don’t slurp, baby, the cup is empty,” Andy said, tugging it away from her and rinsing it out in the sink.

            “Gross,” Vicky said.

            “It’s just blood; you’re full of it,” Andy snapped. Really, he ought to drink some too, when he had the time, but it seemed rude to head up dinner while they were in the midst of a crisis.

            “Sorry,” Vicky said flatly. “I’m going back to my bus. See if this wears off on its own. Later, Patrick.” She didn’t look at him as she left, brushing past Andy on the way out.

            “Kinda bitchy,” Andy said when the door shut.

            “She’s n-not l-like that,” Patrick insisted. His eyebrows were drawn together, his lower lip jutting out in a comical pout. “I just don’t know what’s happening.”

            “Maybe we should go check on Pete and eat some vegetables,” Andy said. Patrick squinted at him.

            “Peek-up?” Carmilla asked. Andy pulled her up with one arm, letting her head rest on his shoulder, and the two of them walked outside, only for Andy to stop dead in his tracks with shock.

            Lying in the middle of the parking lot was Bill, hair fanned out around him and arms spread wide with ecstasy, ecstasy because Gabe was lying on top of him, and the two of them were making out with a passion that seemed, well, seriously unfit for a parking lot.

            “Well there’s something you don’t see every day,” Andy said.

            “I th-think you see it everyday on the C-cobra Starship b-bus,” Patrick said.

            “Well, we’re not on the Cobra bus, are we?” Andy said, feeling troubled.

            'Oh, Dios, belleza, tengo que llevarte a solas,' Gabe purred, his hands knotted in Bill’s hair.

            “You don’t have to get me alone,” Bill said, “You can have me wherever you want me.”

            “You can understand him?” Dirty asked. There was a bit of a crowd around the two men who had eyes for only each other. The crowd included Pete, sitting on the ground in the shade of one of the buses and rocking himself back and forth, Vicky, who looked amused, and the majority of the tour just staring. Gabe and Bill didn’t seem to care.

            “Did I drink the blood of someone who had taken a lot of acid?” Andy asked no one in particular.

            “I don’t d-drink blood, so wh-what’s my excuse?” Patrick asked quietly.

            _'_ Dios mío, sos tan hermoso,' Gabe growled.

            “Yeah, I really am,” Bill said breathlessly, between kisses.

            “What the hell are you two doing?” Mike asked, stepping out of the reverie that most of the tour seemed to be caught in and ripping Gabe off of Bill, then yanking Bill to his feet.

            “I’m kind of busy here,” Bill said, his voice with an almost valleygirl affectation. He flipped his hair. Mike stared at him in disbelief.

            “Are you having fun?” Mike asked.

            “Yeah, I’m having lots of fun, baby,” Bill said. He bounced forward and kissed Mike on the forehead before tackling Gabe back down to the ground.

            Andy turned to ask Patrick if he was seeing this shit, but Patrick was no longer standing next to him. Andy glanced around and saw him kneeling down next to Pete, arm wrapped around his shoulders and murmuring something in his ear. Andy walked over to the two of them, figuring he should try to help if he could. Somewhere between his bus and the one Pete was huddled up against, Pete grabbed Patrick’s face and pulled him into a passionate kiss. Andy’s eyes widened.

            “Wha’s goin on, dada?” Carmilla asked.

            “Something very strange, sweetie,” Andy said. Patrick shoved Pete off, and smacked him across the face. Andy had a pretty intense and sudden craving for lettuce, of all things, but he tried to push the thought aside. Bigger things to worry about, he reminded himself. He got down next to Pete and Patrick on the ground, and was relieved to see Pete was smiling.

            “Patrick,” Pete sounded so relieved, and he was leaning up against Patrick, breathing deep. “I missed you.”

            “I m-missed you t-too,” Patrick said. “But no more kissing, okay?”

            “But Patty, I wanna,” Pete said. Patrick pressed his hands over his eyes and sighed.

            “Yes, I figured that much,” he sighed. “We’re cuddling, okay? Is that good for now?”

            “Mmm,” Pete agreed, inhaling again deeply. Actually, looking closer, Andy thought he might have been smelling Patrick, but he couldn’t be sure.

            “Hey.” Andy looked up and saw Joe standing over the three of them, looking incredibly confused. “Um, I heard yelling. What happened?”

            “I have…. No goddamn idea,” Andy said. He licked his lips. “Hey, do you have any vegetables on your bus? I could, like, super go for some carrots right now.”

            Joe made a face.

            “No, pretty sure we just have Hot Pockets and Pop Tarts, same as every tour bus,” Joe said. “Why is Pete molesting Patrick?”

            Sure enough, when Andy looked back over, Patrick was smacking Pete’s hand away from his chest, his face an alarming crimson color.

            “We just don’t know,” Andy said. “Um. Everyone’s gone insane.”

            “Clearly,” Joe said. “Don’t do that,” he said, catching Pete’s bare wrist as his hand shot down towards Patrick’s crotch. “No means no. Also, I think Patrick would cut your hand off and you need that to play bass.” Pete looked heartbroken, like Joe had crushed a toy in front of him, but Patrick heaved a sigh of relief.

            Andy’s stomach rumbled.

            “I’m vegan,” he announced, then instantly cringed, wondering where the word vomit came from. Joe stared at him.

            “Yes, we know, vegan-vampire, you’re, like, fascinating, dude.”

            “I know you know,” Andy said. He felt something close to panic in his gut, the knowledge that something was deeply wrong, though he couldn’t say what it was.

            “Okay, so, we’re cursed?” Joe guessed. He reached his hand up as though he was going to run it through his hair, and then he pulled a joint out from behind his ear, lit it up, and took a drag. Andy’s eyes widened.

            “Put that out right now,” he said, voice low as he jerked his head towards Carmilla. Joe looked at his hand like he was shocked to see the joint in it and shook his head, blinking a few times.

            “Jesus, yeah, sorry,” he said, smashing it under his foot on the ground. “Sorry, I didn’t even think.”

            “Fine,” Andy said curtly, still angry. “It’s a weird day. Fuck, you don’t think +44 is around here, do you? If we’re still trying to keep magic from Mark Hoppus…”

            “Maybe he’ll just think we’re really goddamn weird,” Joe sighed. He produced another joint from seemingly nowhere, and Andy growled at him. Joe slid it into his pocket quickly, and Andy tightened his grip on Carmilla protectively.

            Andy hadn’t been paying much attention, but it seemed like the majority of Cobra Starship was in an argument with The Academy Is…, or, more specifically, Mike Carden, who looked impressively antagonistic. Gabe and Bill continued to kiss, oblivious to their surroundings. Pete continued trying to worm his way closer to Patrick, and Patrick kept inching away.

            “All right, this is ridiculous,” Joe said, and he raised his voice. “Stop fighting and stop fucking, we’re having a tour meeting!” Even though Joe no longer had half the music world in his obscenely large wolf pack, his voice still carried a weighty command in it, enough to make everyone pay attention to him.

            “Right now?” Bill whined.

            “Right goddamn now,” Joe said. Sisky released his hold on Mike’s arm, and Ryland yanked Gabe back up to his feet. Joe took a drag of yet another joint, but Andy just shifted Carmilla further away from him. “Anybody have any ideas what the fuck is happening?”

            “A fascinating question, Joseph,” Ryland spoke up in a badly affected British accent.

            “Yeah, I’m being serious, so maybe not now, Ry,” Joe said irritably.

            “It’s ‘Guy,’ actually,” Ryland said, not dropping the accent. Joe deflated.

            “And now you’re stuck as Guy Ripley. That’s great, that’s fucking fantastic,” Joe took another drag, breathing deep. “Who all has been acting strangely, here?” he asked.

            “Well I’m absolutely perfect, I don’t know about everyone else,” Bill said, leaning back against a bus. He pulled a hand mirror out of seemingly nowhere and began preening.

            “Cool, so Bill definitely,” Joe said. “Look, if we could all act logical for a second or two, could someone maybe offer a guess as to what’s going on?”

            “Sex curse,” Mike muttered gruffly.

            “Somehow I doubt that,” Andy said, glancing over at Ryland as he combed his fingers through Vicky’s hair.

            “I think it’s whatever Bill says,” Sisky said with puppyish eagerness.

            “Duly noted,” Joe said. Andy glanced around at the informal circle. He tried to catalogue who was acting strange and who wasn’t. It seemed that Sisky and Ryland had just started acting strange, right after-- Andy’s eyes went wide.

            “Nobody touch anybody else!” he shouted. When the bands looked at him, Andy swallowed, his voice seeming suddenly smaller. “I- I can’t be sure, but I think that it spreads through touch. Whatever it is.”

            “Yeah, got any proof for that?” Mike scoffed.

            “We didn’t get Guy Ripley until Ryland helped Gabe up,” Andy said. His voice was irritatingly quiet, but he couldn’t help it any more than he could help his burning need to eat a tomato that instant.

            'Mierda, creo que el vegano tiene razón,' Gabe said. 'Lo obtuve después de tocar a Pete.'

            “Can you seriously only speak Spanish?” Mike asked him.

            '¡Estoy hablando Ingles!' Gabe shouted.

            “He is speaking English,” Bill agreed. Andy snorted a little.

            “He’s r-really n-n-not,” Patrick said. Bill looked mildly surprised.

            “Really? I can understand him just fine,” he said.

            “Then what did he say?” Mike asked.

            “He said he caught it after he touched Pete,” Bill said. He fluffed his hair up with his hands. “But Gabe touched me, and I’m fine. I mean, I’m amazing,” he smiled winningly at no one in particular, his teeth gleaming white. Andy hated to agree when Bill was clearly acting so weird, but he couldn’t help noticing that Bill did, if nothing else, look better than normal. Magnetically attractive, and Andy had never looked at a man twice in his life, but there was something in the soft curve of his hips… Andy shook the thought away before it could fully form. Bill winked at him, and Andy felt a strange fluttering in his chest.

            “Hey!” Patrick yelped. Pete held both his hands in the air, his face a clear expression of guilt.

            “Sorry, sorry, I’m trying not to,” Pete said. He leaned over and licked Patrick’s nose, and Patrick’s whole body cringed up in disgust.

            “Patrick, is your hair, like, alarmingly orange?” Joe asked.

            “Yes,” Patrick groaned.

            “Right, just checking,” Joe said. He took another deep drag, then blew the cloyingly sweet smoke out into the parking lot. Andy glared at him, and Joe looked apologetic.

            The largely unsuccessful group meeting broke up informally, Gabe and Bill kissing passionately again, the Butcher attempting to ward off Sisky from touching him, Nate and Alex with their heads bent together looking nervous, Ryland trying to get quotes from whoever would listen to him, and mercifully, +44 nowhere to be seen.

            “You wanna, um, get the two of them back onto a bus before someone with a cameraphone sees it?” Joe asked Andy nervously, gesturing towards Pete and Patrick. It seemed like, as time went on, Patrick did less and less to push Pete away, and Pete was wrapped all the way around him like a koala without any conflict. Andy grimaced.

            “Maybe, yeah,” he said. “And then I really need to eat, like, a rutabaga or something. Or, fuck, do you think we have celery? Celery sounds so goddamn good.” It did. The thought of it was almost sexual. Joe closed his eyes, pulled one last breath of smoke out of his joint, then shrugged.

            “Here’s hoping,” he said, not sounding particularly sincere.

            Maneuvering Pete and Patrick onto Andy’s bus was difficult, as Pete started whimpering every time he and Patrick were not making some sort of contact, but they coaxed him into just holding Patrick’s hand as they were led up into the bus.

            Inside, Sola and Atalia were sitting at the dining table on laptops, apparently doing some kind of research. Sola waved a little, but Atalia seemed engrossed.

            “What’s up?” Sola asked.

            “We’ve been cursed, we think,” Joe said, lighting another joint. “Hard to tell. Pete’s off the deep end, Patrick’s got a nasty stutter, Andy’s sexually attracted to carrots, and I just can’t stop getting high. Any idea what that could mean?”

            “Nope,” Sola said.

            “Stellar,” Joe replied. Andy walked over to the girls and handed a squirmy Carmilla to Atalia, who accepted her without even looking up from her screen. Andy opened the fridge, remembering that he hadn’t had blood in a couple of weeks, and reached for a bottle, only for his hand to slide slightly to the right, landing on a bag of pizza rolls instead. He frowned, tried to grab it again, only for his hand to miss again, this time hitting a jug of orange juice. Panic rose in a thick lump in his throat as he tried to grab it again, and yet again he found the blood impossible to touch.

            “I can’t drink,” he said quietly.

            “Yeah, you’re straightedge,” Joe yawned. “We’ve heard that too, buddy.”

            “No, I can’t _drink_ ,” Andy said, willing them to understand the panic. “Like, there’s a jug of something red in the fridge and I can’t touch it.”

            “You can’t?” Joe looked at him sharply.

            “No!” Andy said. “And It’s been a while, I need b-b-bl…” he couldn’t force the word out. “B-blueberries,” he choked out, then shook his head. “I mean, it’s been a while since I fed on b-broccoli.” Fear was definitely filling up his chest. Surely he wasn’t going to get starved to death by this curse, right?

            “Why can’t you even say ‘blood’?” Joe asked. Andy wanted to snap back that he didn’t know, and if he knew he’d be figuring out how to fix it, but he responded automatically, without getting to think about it.

            “I’m vegan.”

            Andy and Joe locked eyes in identical expressions of confusion and fear. Andy had to drink blood. He didn’t know if he would snap his jaws around Patrick’s neck or die first, but neither option sounded particularly appealing. And Jesus, he was thirsty. Now that he couldn’t drink blood, thirst was all he could think about. He could hear the muffled, damp sound of everyone’s heartbeats, smell the thick, savory blood pumping under Sola and Atalia’s skin, and the pungent sweetness of Patrick’s blood, so close, so defenseless.

            Andy sat down, feeling woozy.

            “Um, there’s no rutabaga, but I think there’s celery in here?” Joe said, his eyes still alight with worry. Andy held out a hand, and as soon as Joe put a stalk of celery in it, Andy bit half of the stalk off, chewing anxiously.

            “There’s a bee here, do you think it’s alive?” Pete asked, suddenly eager. Andy looked over to see that Pete had something tiny and yellow pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

            “What the hell are you doing with that thing?” Andy asked. Pete was grinning up at him, apparently oblivious that Patrick had moved to a seat on the opposite end of the room.

            “I was thinking I could probably convince Dirty to eat it, what do you think?” Pete asked.

            “I think bees are endangered and you should let it go,” Andy said. He ripped off another bite of celery.

            “Okay,” Pete said amiably, releasing the bee, which buzzed angrily right into a window. “Say, where is Dirty? He was gonna pick up some ingredients for napalm so we could blow stuff up!”

            “As long as you don’t blow yourself up,” Joe said lazily. He took a long drag and gave Andy an apologetic look before aiming his exhalation at the cracked open window.

            “Is it just you four that are affected?” Sola asked.

            “Looks like it’s the whole tour,” Andy said. “Or, everyone that’s been touched. Bill and Gabe can’t move without trying to fuck each other, Vicky’s acting all weird and aloof-”

            “What, like a fanfiction?” Sola asked. The four of them turned to stare at her, and she flushed, just slightly, not the horrific red Patrick kept turning.

            “You know,” she looked embarrassed. “Because Pete keeps being all over Patrick, and… well, you guys are acting like caricatures of yourselves.”

            “This is… how we act in fanfiction?” Andy asked. Sola looked Atalia for help, but Atalia refused to meet her eyes.

            “Well, no, not exactly,” she said. “I mean- well, I don’t read much fanfiction!” she said defensively. “But what I have read- you know, Patrick’s all… blushy and… um, innocent,” she looked away from Patrick’s harsh glare at her. “And then, well, Joe usually kind gets stuck with the stoner best friend role,” she gave him an apologetic look. “And Andy’s pretty quiet. Some vegan stereotype gets thrown in.” She shrugged.

            “What about me?” Pete asked.  

            “C-could it b-be someone _really_ misunderstanding b-bipolar?” Patrick suggested quietly.

            “Oh, fuck,” Pete said.

            “So, maybe you’re cursed to act like fanfiction characters,” Sola said.

            “Well, yeah, that’s an issue,” said Pete, already halfway in Patrick’s lap again. “But also I remembered that we have a vampire problem to deal with.

***

            “You think we’re being made to act like fanfiction versions of ourselves?” Bill asked.

            “Do you have a better explanation?” Joe asked. Bill looked wavy. Weirdly sexy, but still wavy, and blurry around the edges.

            Joe liked to get high from time to time. Lots of people did, and he never thought of it as a big deal if he smoked every now and then. He even knew, to a degree, that it was a bit of a joke amongst the fans. But fuck, he didn’t want to be high all the time. He couldn’t think of anyone who would want that. The experience was unsettling, his head felt heavy, and he couldn’t get a good sense of what was going on at any given moment. The world around him felt as though it was all moving through water.

            “Why’s Gabey-Baby speaking Spanish?” Bill asked. His shirt was riding up around his stomach, and he looked languid where he leaned on the bus, his eyes dark.

            “People know he’s from South America? People are racist?” Joe shrugged. “Fuck if I know, man. Why’s Patrick got a stutter?”

            “Hmm, I don’t know, but I hope the curse makes him a little less straight,” Bill said. “You could put that boy in a bowl and eat him with a spoon.” Bill bit down on his lower lip to emphasize the statement. Joe whistled.

            “Man, you know, you seem the most normal on the outside, but talking to you under this curse is definitely the weirdest.” Bill made a noise halfway between a purr and growl at him, and Joe stepped reflexively back.

            “Anyway,” Joe drew the word out, fully aware that the slight lisp in his voice was getting more pronounced. “You guys think you’re gonna be good to play tonight?”

            “We’re gonna be fabulous, baby,” Bill said, kissing Joe on the forehead, the spot where his lips were burning.

            “If you say so,” Joe said. “Um, Gabe?”

            Gabe had spent the majority of this conversation kissing trails up and down Bill’s neck, but he looked up then, his lips pink and swollen.

            “Um, are you game to use a backing track or something? And just, like, try to lipsync in English?”

            Gabe’s lip curled.

            'No hago playback,' he growled. Joe didn’t speak Spanish, but he was pretty sure he got the gist of it.

            “Look, dude, it's one night and it's kind of an emergency. Roll with it? Please?” Joe was too high, his world too lopsided to have an argument that was half in another language.

            '¡Eso es completamente mierda y de ninguna manera de lo que se tratan nuestras bandas!'

            Joe blinked at him, and almost forgot how to open his eyes again.

            “Bill, what did he say?” he asked.

            “He said that that’s bullshit, and goes against his morals,” Bill said. He puckered his lips into a kiss and looked critically at himself in the reflective metal of the bus.

            “Gabe,” Joe pleaded. “My dude. My man. One night. I swear to fuck you won’t get caught. If you do I’ll get a shitty tattoo of you too. I’ll con Patrick into doing it. Just, like…” Joe trailed off, suddenly unsure of how to find his voice for a moment. He continued, slightly softer. “Okay?”

            Gabe glared at him.

            'Bueno,' Gabe said. Bill nodded absently at Joe, and Joe sighed in relief. The world looked way too foggy, and Joe was really hoping he could still play all of the songs when he got up on stage.

            Joe was sincerely hoping that he was done with crises, but he dared not say it outloud in case he jinxed anything. The Academy Is… was okay to play, if nothing else. As long as Pete stayed close to Patrick, he could play. Patrick wouldn’t be able to sing any of the swear words, and the stutter was… well, it was definitely an issue. Joe was hoping that maybe the crowd would be singing too loud to notice. Nobody had touched anyone in +44 yet, no small miracle. Joe wasn’t certain what would happen if Mark Hoppus got hit with a fanfiction curse, but he didn’t want to know.

            On the list of infected, however, was the Butcher. In between the time that Fall Out Boy got on the bus to cool off and Joe came to do damage control, Sisky apparently decided that he could not go another minute without snuggling into his band-mate’s arms. The Butcher was currently giving Cobra Starship a lecture on vegetarianism.

            Honestly, the apparent obsession with diet was weird. When Joe tried to get something to eat, the only thing he could touch was pizza. Sola said they usually ate pizza in fanfiction. Joe had tried to argue that they didn’t _only_ eat pizza and they probably would have died of malnutrition if that were true, but he found that he was having a harder time talking than usual. He tried calling Marie to vent to her about the strange and terrible day, and most of the time he simply couldn’t speak. Sola had a theory about that too.

            “It’s probably a Peterick,” she said, giving Pete and Patrick another apologetic glance. “I mean, that’s what most of the fanfiction is. And in them, you and Andy are…” she cringed without continuing.

            “Side characters?” Joe asked. She nodded. Joe rolled his eyes. He didn’t mind that much, actually, and any anger he might have felt was definitely lessened by the two joints he was holding in his right hand. He had one between his index and middle finger, another between his middle finger and his ring finger, and he could feel a significant change in cognition with every hit he took.

            “Wh-what about th-the v-v-vampire?” Patrick asked. His eyebrows were turned up in the middle in a downright sappy expression of innocence, but Joe knew better. He could feel Patrick through the bond, and there was intense anger boiling under the babyfaced exterior.

            “When did you guys get out here?” Joe asked. His head felt incredibly hot.

            “We’ve been here. You would know that if you didn’t do drugs,” Andy said. Joe rolled his eyes.

            “Dude-”

            “You know I didn’t mean to say it,” Andy said. Joe nodded. He had forgotten, actually.

            “KTC texted me the details,” Pete said. They’d made the fortunate discovery that Pete was much more manageable when Patrick was touching him. It made Patrick’s face red whenever they were making contact, but they agreed it was for the best. Pete was coherent, at least, and could talk without shouting or crying. “According to him, there’s reports of a vampire living in the one of the basement maintenance rooms in this very venue. And at night, it comes out and kills the fans.”

            “Can we…” Joe trailed off, trying to think of the word for a moment. “...um. Confirm? Yeah, can we confirm it’s been killing?”

            “D-d-do we want to wait for s-someone t-to,” Patrick’s voice lowered to a whisper, “ _die_ before we d-do something?”

            “I’d rather do you than just something,” Pete said. Patrick flushed and stepped on Pete’s foot.

            “I think our primary concern is fixing this,” Andy said. “I have to drink b-blackberry juice.” He winced. “I’m vegan.”

            “We know,” Joe and the others said in unison. Joe giggled. The sound was so weird. His giggle turned a little hysterical. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know how high he was. He just also couldn’t stop it.

            At least he wasn’t anxious.

            “Look. No, listen,” Joe pressed his fingers against his eyelids, tried to focus. “Okay, we need to take care of the vampire problem while we’re here. If it’s a problem. But we can’t just kill something based on rumors. I’d rather no one died, but frankly, that’s just not fair. And, I mean, look at the state we’re in. Can…” the words stopped coming, and he bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood. “Can we fight like this?”

            “Probably not unless I can throw carrots at them,” Andy said.

            “Yeah, so we’ll keep an eye out, but we can come back if we get more proof. As for fixing this,” Joe looked around hopelessly. Most of the bands had hidden in their respective buses to prevent the spread, so they couldn’t help. Not like most of them were that proficient at magic, anyway. “Um, ahhh, Pete, could you call Ryan?”

            “RYAN!” Pete shouted, causing Patrick to jump. “I LOVE RYAN I CAN CALL HIM AND TELL HIM TO COME I MISS HIS SKINNY EMO ASS.”

            “Don’t tell him to come,” Joe said. “Jesus, don’t do that. I don’t want to know what fanfiction would do to Panic. Just ask him for help.”

            “I COULD KISS RYAN TOO HE HAS A NICE MOUTH,” Pete yelled.

            “No you could not!” Patrick snapped. Joe turned to him in disbelief, and Patrick blushed.

            “You, um, didn’t stutter,” Joe said.

            “I, um, I,” Patrick shrugged, shaking his head. Pete planted a wet kiss on Patrick’s cheek, and Patrick turned a deeper shade of red. But he didn’t pull away.

            Usually, Joe respected his friend’s privacy to a fault. The bond was cool, but they trusted him not to abuse it, and he didn’t. He didn’t pry, didn’t find out more than they told him. Not unless the feelings were so loud that Joe simply couldn’t ignore them. He tried to shut out the rest, even when he was curious.

            However, being this high was lowering his impulse control, and he probed into Patrick’s head, just for a moment. He backed out as soon as he realized what he was doing, but not before he gained a bit of insight into the situation.

            Patrick definitely wasn’t opposed to Pete kissing him. That was curious. He was protective and loving and… no, Joe had to think about it later, had to focus now.

            “Can you call Ryan without having phonesex, crying, or getting him out here?” Joe asked. Pete nodded eagerly.

            “Great,” Joe said. “Call Ryan, and then we’re all gonna hunker down in the green room and try not to break anything until we go onstage.”

            “Then we can break stuff?” Pete asked.

            “No,” Joe said.

            “You could change your mind,” Pete said with a grin. He apparently had Ryan on speed dial, because it only took two buttons to get him on the phone.

            “RYAN I LOVE YOU WE’RE UNDER A CURSE HOW DO WE FIX IT?” Pete yelled. Joe turned to share a long suffering look with Andy and saw that he was flickering.

            Joe cocked his head and stared at Andy, watching him. He seemed to be there one moment and then not there, like a mirage. He didn’t disappear all the way, he simply looked insubstantial, like he became made of steam for a moment. Joe narrowed his eyes, but the moment passed, and Andy looked solid and vaguely pissed off again. Maybe he had just imagined it.

            “J-Joe?” Joe’s head snapped up, and Patrick was staring at him, looking nervous.

            “Huh?” Joe asked.

            “D-did you hear that?” he asked. Joe shook his head.

            “RYAN SAID THERE’S A SPELL THAT CAN FIX US!” Pete cheered, and Joe nodded vaguely. Getting this fixed was a fantastic idea. “IT’S A REVERSAL SPELL AND HE’S GONNA COME MEET US TOMORROW WEARING A HAZMAT SUIT AND DO IT.”

            “Fuckin’ A, man,” Joe said. “Let’s go. The techs can babysit the other bands.”

            “PATRICK, WE’RE GONNA GET BETTER,” Pete cried, kissing Patrick yet again, and spinning in victory, apparently. He held his hands in the air and spun himself away from the band, giggling as he did and landing, wriggly and happy, into Mark Hoppus’ arms.

            “Aw, fuck,” Joe groaned. “You weren’t supposed to infect Mr. Blink 182.”

            “What did you call me?” Mark asked. He seemed remarkably calm for someone holding an armful of squirming Pete Wentz. “And, wait, infected me with what?”

            “Fanfiction,” Joe said sagely. “You feelin weird, Blink 182?” Mark stared at him.

            “I didn’t until I came back here,” he said. He stood Pete back upright, and Pete fell back onto Patrick, apparently oblivious to his mistake.

            “No strange… urges?” Joe asked.

            “I’m gonna leave, actually,” Mark said. He froze before he took a full step away. “Go call Tom and tell him I’m in love with him.”

            “Oh, motherfuck!” Joe growled. He watched as Mark walked away, considered following after him, then shook his head.

            “M-maybe we’ll accidentally g-get Blink 182 back together?” Patrick suggested halfheartedly.

            “And maybe they’ll even forgive us one day,” Joe said.

            Joe moved his hand in front of his face, and then was suddenly transfixed by it. It shimmered in the air, and he waved it in front of his face a few times. Weird.

            “Joe?”

            “Hmm?”

            “Were we going inside?” Andy asked. He bit the end off a carrot.

            “Shit, yeah,” Joe nodded, then blinked a few times in a row.  Whenever all of this was over, he was going to take a long vacation from Fall Out Boy.

            Against all odds, the concert went well. Being wildly self-centered seemed to only increase Bill’s already incredible stage presence. Joe wasn’t sure, but he thought that the weird sexual magnetism he had on everyone on the tour might have spread to the fans. The screaming response whenever Bill did anything was earsplitting.

            As for Cobra Starship, it was a little more complicated. Alex had bumped into Bill backstage, and he wouldn’t take off his sunglasses or set down his beer, but he seemed relatively normal. Ryland, stuck as Guy Ripley, was completely stunned when he was handed a guitar, but luckily still knew how to play it. He stood stiffly on stage, but Bill and Victoria convinced him to “pretend” to be Ryland for the night. If they acted weirder than normal, the audience probably just chalked it up to them being Cobra Starship. They were a weird band.

            +44 acted mostly normal. Mark looked a little mopey, but Joe didn’t want to get into it.

            Miraculously, Fall Out Boy was completely fine. Joe and Andy could still play their instruments just fine. No one could tell that Pete was clingier than usual. Patrick couldn’t swear, but he got around it pretty well by thrusting the microphone out towards the audience during Arms Race. They made it through the whole set, and collapsed in the green room afterwards.

            “Should we look around for the vampire?” Pete asked. Joe couldn’t tell if he was on another dramatic downswing, or if he was just too tired to bounce around anymore.

            “We can keep an eye out,” Joe yawned. He pulled a blunt out from behind his ear, one that he had not tucked away there, but somehow knew would be there anyway. “We’re not exactly in top-notch fighting condition.”

            “Maybe, yeah,” Pete agreed. He snuggled up with his head under Patrick’s chin, and Joe sighed.

            “Hello? Is this the dressing room for the Fall Out Boys?” The tell-tale British accent was immediately followed by annoyed cursing in Spanish.

            Joe opened the door to let in Cobra Starship. Nate kept a good five feet of distance between himself and everyone else in the band, his eyes wary as he moved to the furthest corner of the room.

            '¿Cualquier cosa?' Gabe asked.

            “Um, William isn’t here…” Joe said.

            “Do you have any news?” Alex asked. He was smiling a lopsided grin, but his voice was serious.

            “Isn’t it too dark in here for sunglasses?” Joe asked.

            “Oh, yeah, I’ve wanted to take them off for hours,” Alex said, still grinning. “I’m also getting fucking wasted. How’s the weed?”

            “My head hurts,” Joe said.

            “Cheers,” Alex said.

            'Volvamos al punto, por favor,' Gabe said urgently.

            “Right, well…” Joe trailed off. His hand looked insubstantial, and he forced himself to look away from it. “Pete called Ryan, and Ryan thinks he has a reversal spell, but he has to be with us to do it. He’s going to meet us at the venue tomorrow.”

            'Gracias a Dios,' Gabe said.

            “Now….” Joe trailed off. “...now we just have to wait this out.”

            Of course, saying it out loud jinxed it.

            Atalia burst into the room, security catching up to her and grabbing her under the arms at once.

            “No, look, I’m with them!” she shouted.

            “L-let her g-go!” Patrick demanded. The venue security officer gave Patrick an odd look, but he let her go and shut the door ago. Atalia didn’t look any less frightened now that they were gone.

            “It’s Sola,” she said. “She came in with Carmilla ages ago to ask you a question, but she never came back out. She won’t answer her phone either.”

            Joe’s stomach plummeted, the high he was still riding making the emotional reaction feel like a roller coaster.

            “There’s a vampire living in here?” Andy asked. Joe tried as hard as he could to pull away from whatever Andy was feeling. He did not want to even imagine what “kid in danger” felt like. He felt sick enough on his own.

             “Can one of you guys tell our drivers we’re gonna be a little late?” Joe asked, turning to Cobra Starship. Or, rather, to four of them. Alex was nowhere to be seen.

            “Yeah, sure,” Victoria said with a roll of her eyes. But Joe was still focused on the corner where Alex should have been.

            “Where’s Alex?” he asked in a low voice. Sure, he could have just left, but Joe had a feeling that it was more than that.

            “Does it matter?” Andy shouted.

            Alex slowly faded back into view. The only sign that he was scared was the sight of his eyebrows over the tops of his sunglasses, but Joe could smell the fear radiating off of him.

            “You weren’t there,” Joe said.

            “I don’t think I was anywhere,” Alex said, looking faintly sick.

            “What are you t-talking about?” Patrick asked meekly.

            “You’re disappearing,” Joe said. He thought back to the fuzziness of his hands, the intangible Andy, the faintness in Mike’s voice even when he shouted. “The side characters are disappearing.”

            “I’m not waiting for this,” Andy said. “We’re going. Now,” he stormed out of the room. Joe had to leave with him, had to help.

            “Don’t you dare stop talking to Alex, and none of you touch Nate!” he shouted, and he ran out of the room after Andy.

***

            As far as curses went, Patrick much preferred being turned into his half-vampire friend. There was absolutely nothing fun about being unable to get a word in edgeways. No one seemed to notice the sheer amount of times he tried to talk and nothing came out, and even when he could say something, he stuttered his way through it.

            And of course, embarrassing on the surface was nothing compared to the things he was less inclined to talk about. The fact that Sola had declared that this was a fanfiction was actually not all that surprising to Patrick. Not a surprise mainly due to the fact that every time Pete touched him Patrick could feel himself getting harder. That wasn’t something that happened to him. His heart didn’t flutter when Pete slung an arm around him, and he didn’t feel electric sparks on his skin wherever Pete touched him. Except, apparently, he did now. He craved Pete like water, and felt his breath catch in his throat every time Pete so much as looked at him.

            He also was sure he’d feel a lot better about all of this bullshit if he could give someone a good cussing out.

            But, as was the case with his band, personal issues could be dealt with later.

            Pete was still looking anxiously at Alex when Andy stormed out, and Patrick had to tug him after the rest of the band, ignoring the way his stomach rolled when he felt Pete’s warm fingers in his own. Trying not to think about Pete’s eyes. Trying to focus on the missing kids, God, they were both kids. Sola might act grown up and be way in over her head, but still.

            “Wh-wh-?” he tried to speak, couldn’t get anything out, and made a noise of frustration in the back of his throat. Pete squeezed his hand.

            “You can do it,” he said, his voice barely audible.

            “Where are you going?” Patrick yelled. Andy spun, hands clenched into fists.

            “I’m finding my daughter!” he yelled. “Would you like to stop for a fucking water break?”

            Patrick could tell by the heat in his face that he was blushing again, and now his throat was too dry to give him any volume, but he had to keep talking.

            “D-d-do you even kn-know where t-t-t-” he whined in the back of his throat, unable to continue with Andy glaring at him like that.

            “Where to go?” Pete finished. Andy snarled.

            “SHOULD I ASK FOR A MAP?” he demanded. He flickered, and Patrick’s hand squeezed Pete’s convulsively. Everything frightened him at the moment, even slamming doors, but he wasn’t about to broadcast that annoying part of the curse to the rest of the tour. Pete, however, he didn’t mind knowing. He got the sense that Pete maybe understood what this was like.

            “Y-you need a p-plan,” Patrick said. “If- if you g-get lost…”

            “It’ll take us even longer,” Pete finished decisively. He looked bad. Patrick could see in the grim set of his mouth and the way he gritted his teeth from time to time that he was low, painfully low, but he was doing a good job combatting it, given the crisis.

            “What do you suggest?” Andy growled, stepping closer. Patrick just barely stopped himself from taking a reflexive step back.

            “You’re a vampire,” Pete stepped in front of Patrick protectively, and disobeying his head yet again, Patrick’s heart took off. Swooning. Ugh. “You have extra senses. Use them.”

            “THIS PLACE SEATS TEN FUCKING THOUSAND!” Andy yelled. “I CAN’T DISTINGUISH A HUMAN BEING IN-”

            “Shut up, dude,” Joe said, his voice still rolling in slow and lazy curves, moving a little bit like the smoke from the joint he held in his hand. “Vampires feed. Even if he cleans up after himself, there’ll be a dead blood residue.”

            Andy glared at him, flickered again, and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose.

            “Lower, I think,” he said. He didn’t apologize, but he started walking in a different direction, which was about as good as Patrick could hope for under the circumstances. This lasted for not a full minute before Andy growled with frustration

            “Joe, can you tell where I am with the pack thing?” Andy asked. Joe hesitated.

            “Uhh, maybe, but I’d rather-”

            “I’m going on ahead, catch up,” Andy said, and he sprinted off, leaving them no chance to catch up.

            Joe huffed, but didn’t protest. “We should walk fast, still. We don’t want him to face off against a vampire alone.”

            There were no disagreements, and Pete and Patrick jogged to keep up with Joe. It led them through quite a few “Authorized Personnel Only” doors, but, as Pete always reminded them, they were Fall Out Boy. Getting out of trouble wasn’t the issue it used to be.

            Following a few sets of stairs down, Patrick was a little alarmed at the size of the venue. If his sense of direction was right, he imagined they were a level or two underneath the stage itself, but he couldn’t be positive. Patrick wanted to ask if they were going the right way, but maybe the newly developed anxiety was a good thing. He didn’t really want to second-guess Joe and risk pissing him off.

            Without a running commentary of knowing where they were, it was downright terrifying when Joe stopped dead in his tracks, inhaling deeply through his nose. He looked horror struck, and Patrick inched his way closer to Pete. Patrick wanted to demand why the dramatic pause, what the hell was happening, but he was still incapable of speech.

            “Blood here,” Joe said. “Lots of it. And a fuck ton of bleach. Uh, something bad happened here.”

            “T-to them?” Patrick asked.

            “No, Jesus, no,” Joe said. “I mean, I don’t think so. The bleach isn’t fresh. But it was a lot of people.”

            “Should we keep going before they die?” Pete asked. Patrick wasn’t sure Joe could hear the pessimistic desperation in his voice. Pete already thought the girls were dead, and Patrick stepped closer to him still, hip bumping into Pete’s to tell him that it would be okay.

            Joe paused for a second, then continued down the hallway. The fluorescent lights weren’t flickering, for which Patrick was deeply grateful, but only about one in three of them was on. It made the subterranean hall feel eerie and abandoned. The whole thing gave Patrick a strong sense of trepidation, but Joe knew what was going on with Andy, so presumably he would start running if there were any serious trouble.

            Joe froze suddenly, sensing something that Patrick couldn’t, and started sprinting. There went that peace of mind.

            Patrick only had to tug on Pete’s arm once to send him running forward alongside him. Neither of them was running at werewolf speed, but Joe wasn’t either at the moment, and they weren’t too far behind him when they slammed past the heavy door into a room that stank of blood.

            Patrick had about half a second to take the room in, the toddler crying on the floor and the teenage girl duct taped to a rusty pipe in the corner. Andy was stood in front of Carmilla, ominously still. The stranger in the room was vampiric, not in the well dressed way Patrick was used to, but pale and hunched in on himself like Nosferatu in an orange maintenance jumpsuit. He was creepy, certainly, but Patrick couldn’t help noticing that Carmilla and Sola looked completely unharmed.

            “PATRICK,” Joe yelled, not panicked, but in a commanding voice. Joe launched forward, not at Nosferatu, but at Andy. Every instinct fighting against him, Patrick threw himself between Andy and the other vampire, limbs shaking like leaves as he held his arms out to protect the strange vampire.

            “What the-” Andy flickered “-you doing?!”

            “ ** _You are not going to kill him_** ,” Joe commanded, then let Andy go. Patrick sank down on trembling knees while the two of them rushed around him and pinned the vampire to the wall.

            The curse definitely took some innate courage away from him. The roar of panic in his ears didn’t subside for a minute, and when Patrick could see and hear properly again, Pete was right in front of him, unspeaking, but his eyes full of uncanny understanding.

            “I’ll ask you one. More. Time,” Andy growled. Patrick gave Pete a tiny nod to reassure him that he was okay, and he let Pete help him to his feet so that he could turn around. Andy was holding a stake up under the vampire’s wobbling chin. Patrick hadn’t known vampires could look ill, but this one did. “What were you doing with my daughter?” His voice cracked on the last word.

            “I wasn’t going to kill her,” the man whispered. Somehow all the loose skin made Patrick expect his voice to be cold and damp sounding, but he spoke in a papery rasp. “I brought the girls in to feed but then I smelled the little one-”

            Andy let out a feral snarl, digging the tip of his stake higher up under the man’s chin.

            “-and I wanted to know!” he cried. “I wanted to understand how she could… be what she was. And then the older one, her nanny, she said the girl could go in the sun, and only drank a little blood, said that she never killed!” He paused, staring at Andy in wonder. “And you are her father. Not her maker, but her father.”

            Andy was unmoved.

            “Most vampires don’t kill, you fucking monster.”

            The other vampire looked close to tears.

            “Then how do they feed? How do they live?”

            “He, um, he…” Joe tapered off, but held up a finger so that no one interrupted him. “He doesn’t know, Andy.”

            “What, you haven’t been outside? Not once? Who the hell turned you?” Andy demanded. The man was still shaking his head.

            “I don’t know, no, I’m sorry,” he said. He shook his head, seemingly oblivious to his soft chin being scratched by the stake.

            Andy reached down and scooped up Carmilla. She was silent and scared, but she clung to Andy eagerly, and did not turn her wide eyes from the vampire.

            “We need to kill him,” Andy spat. “He’s a menace.”

            “That’s not you talking, man,” Joe said.

            “You want to fucking bet?” Andy asked.

            “You’re a pacifist,” Joe said. “You fight a, uh, hell of a lot for one, but you’re still a pacifist. Yeah, he’s killed people, but Carm is fine, and he didn’t know any better.”

            Andy still seethed. While the two of them stared each other off, Patrick heard a small noise from the corner. He ran over to Sola, his hands shaking as he fumbled to get the duct tape off of her. It took a few minutes, but Sola seemed incredibly grateful when she could finally lower her arms.

            “Well, I’m not going to teach him,” Andy said.

            “Just tell him where to get started and he’ll do better,” Joe said.

            “And inflict him on the world?” Andy asked.

            “Pete,” Joe called. Patrick walked over to Pete and put a steadying hand on his. “Help me out here, man, is he serious?”

            “Can you, um, can you have him say his intent?” Pete asked. He was foggy and overwhelmed, but still trying to stay present.

            Joe looked at the vampire, who simply looked confused.

            “Right, asking the question, forgot,” Joe said. “If we let you go, you promise not to kill again? You go out, you travel by night, and you learn how to feed without killing? No matter what?”

            “I promise,” the man said, so vehement that Patrick didn’t need Pete to confirm for him. “I don’t want to kill anyone, I just- I thought I had to. I thought that was the only way. I’m so, so sorry.”

            “Well, you know better now?” Joe asked. He nodded again, and Joe glanced at Pete.

            “He means it,” Pete said. “Really. He’ll be okay, Andy.”

            Andy bared his teeth at the man, still fuming.

            “Come near my daughter or anyone again with intent to kill and my band won’t be able to save you,” Andy said. He shoved the vampire to the ground, and he led the procession back up out of the basement.

The whole way up, Patrick kept one protective arm around Pete and the other on Sola, going back and forth between the two of them with encouraging words. Sola looked badly shell-shocked, and Pete didn’t look much better. At times, he looked worse.

            The green room and all the dressing rooms were almost empty when they got back upstairs, but there were still techs pushing gear around, so they couldn’t have been gone long. Sola sprinted into Atalia’s arms, and Patrick took advantage of the free moment to collapse on the couch, towing Pete down with him.

            Pete buried his face in the crook of Patrick’s neck, and Patrick stroked his hair on reflex. He usually tried to talk to Pete when he was upset, but he couldn’t talk, and this was a different kind of upset, so he assumed Pete knew the sentiment was still there.

            “Hurts,” Pete said, his voice muffled with skin so that Patrick barely heard what he said.

            “Wh-what hurts?” Patrick asked. Rather than responding, Pete just wiggled closer at first. Then he sighed.

            “Everything. Er, no. Chest. Chest hurts.”

            “W-well, you m-must b-be getting a heart attack, old m-m-man,” Patrick teased, and Pete laughed weakly.

            “You’re s’pposed to respect your elders,” he said. Patrick laughed from his chest and shook his head.

            “Hey.” Patrick looked up at Joe, smoking again, with a second joint lit and tucked behind his ear. “We gotta load up the buses. Are we, um, switching up sleeping arrangements tonight?”

            Patrick glanced once at Pete, though he didn’t really need to. He had already felt Pete tense up when Joe asked, and he knew the answer.

            “P-p-pete can st-stay on my bus tonight,” Patrick said. Pete relaxed again, and Patrick coaxed him to his feet. He then tried to give Patrick a wet “thank you” kiss, and Patrick smacked him on the nose like a dog. Never mind the uptick in his heartbeat, he didn’t want them doing anything out where Joe and the techs and God himself could see them.

            Shoving the sound equipment off the bed to go to sleep seemed like a strangely anticlimactic end to the day, but having Pete climb in with him reminded Patrick that the weird wasn’t over yet. Pete seemed like he was doing marginally better, but Patrick didn’t want to leave him alone.

            “D-do you, um, sleep with the light on or off?” Patrick asked. He felt a little guilty that he’d forgotten, but Pete smiled shyly at him.

            “I’m fine either way, long as I have you, Patty.”

            “If the n-nicknames don’t leave with the c-curse, I’m demanding a refund,” Patrick said. Curling up together under the covers felt strangely natural to Patrick. He forgot how easy it was to share a bed with Pete, even though he was a living space heater. Patrick was naturally cold, and it got warm under the blankets much faster with Pete there.

            Patrick was just starting to drift off when he heard Pete talk.

            “I’m in love with you, you know,” he said. Patrick opened his eyes, just barely able to see Pete’s in the dark.

            “That’s just the c-curse talking,” he said, though for some reason his chest ached saying so.

            He realized that Pete could probably see the pining in Patrick’s aura, the desperate craving for Pete, the magnetism. It didn’t really embarrass him, knowing Pete was feeling the effects of the curse too, but it was strange, suddenly being filled with all of this mutual attraction. Pete’s mouth twisted, but he scooted closer to Patrick.

            “I love you,” he said again, looking determined. And Patrick was overwhelmed with want, unnatural and too strong. When Pete closed in to kiss him again, this time he did not pull back. He didn’t encourage it either, already dreading the awkwardness of being back to his normal self again, but he didn’t pull away.

            Pete felt nice, and Patrick was weak. For someone on the rebound, he’d had an awful lot of sex and phenomenally little kissing, and it was a welcome change of pace. Pete’s hand on the small of Patrick’s back, his breath on Patrick’s cheek, it all felt like safety and warmth and love and _Pete_ , and somewhere in the midst of soft kissing with no intent to go anywhere else, Patrick fell asleep.

            Morning came too soon, and before remembering any of the intimacy from the night before, Patrick realized with annoyance that he had fallen asleep with his hat on. And it still wouldn’t come off. The curse was, apparently, still intact.

            He then realized that he had only awoken because Pete was bouncing up and down right on top of him, grinning fluorescently bright in the early morning sun.

            “MORNING MORNING MORNING,” Pete crowed, and Patrick covered his head with a pillow.

            Patrick tried to tell Pete to fuck off. Still cursed with the inability to use swear words, the best he could do was groan and shove Pete out of the bed.

            “RYAN’S ALMOST HERE,” Pete announced. Patrick mumbled into his pillow. He was sort of hoping to sleep through that part and wake up with brown hair and cursing, but life just couldn’t be that simple, could it?

            Patrick dragged out the time it took to get ready, brushing his teeth and getting dressed slowly so as to eat up more of the time. He was in no mood to go around stuttering and blushing, especially not if they were adding another person to come and watch the sideshow.

            Pete must have been doing better, at least, since he wasn’t hanging around the bus when Patrick got out of the bathroom.

            Patrick tried to dress as normally as possible, but he couldn’t remove the unfamiliar hat. Still, he gave the blotchy, puffy, deformed version of himself a look in the mirror and decided that it was good enough before stepping off the bus.

            He had sort of expected Ryan to already be standing in the parking lot, and was therefore more than a little concerned to discover a crowd forming outside that was very devoid of Ryan.

            Walking amidst the hushed voices, Patrick tried very hard to ask what was up, but his voice wouldn’t come for more than a whispered “Wh-wh.” He tried to catch Pete’s eye to get some help, but Pete was deep in conversation with a distraught looking Bill.

            “-odds he went off on his own?” Pete asked. “He was angry, right?”

            “He wouldn’t,” Bill growled. Still, somehow, alluringly. “He would let me know, okay?”

            Pete nodded, looking miserable, then turned to Vicky.

            “And Alex?” he asked. Vicky still looked annoyed and superior, and sounded sarcastic.

            “No idea. Haven’t seen him this morning.”  

            Patrick’s stomach dropped.

            “Have they just… disappeared?” he asked. “A-alex and M-mike?”

            Gabe nodded curtly at him, and Patrick felt ill.

            “Look, they can’t be gone forever,” Joe said, surprisingly calm for the situation. Probably still high. “Once we reverse this, they’ll be back.”

            “And if they don’t come back?” Nate asked. His arms were still crossed, still trying to make himself as small as possible, but he was furious. “What then? We tell their families they were just another casualty of being too close to Fall Out Boy?”

            Patrick felt like he’d had ice water dumped on him, and it looked like the rest of his band had similar reactions from the way they reacted.

            'No es su culpa,' Gabe said in a low voice, at the same time as Bill said “Leave them alone.”

            “Hey, we’re well on our way to disappearing too, if you haven’t noticed,” Joe said. He flickered then, giving dreadful weight to his words.

            “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” Nate said.

            It was almost worse, Patrick thought, that he meant it. If he had dragged it out or just said anything to get the tour off of his back, Nate could have been the bad guy. But he meant it. And it was their fault. They put people in danger by proxy. Patrick felt ill.

            “Ryan’s on his way,” Pete spoke at last to the subdued group. Then he apparently caught sight of Dirty, because his face lit up and he tackled someone at full speed.

            The serious versions of everyone’s cursed selves were even weirder, Patrick realized. Bill was still looking into every reflective surface and Joe was still smoking, but they were like cartoon characters that had just been told one of their cartoon friends had died. Not that Mike and Alex were dead; Patrick refused to believe it. But he couldn’t help his stomach churning with worry.

            Andy had just come back from a nearly two minute blink into nonexistence when a rental car with dark tinted windows pulled up into the bus area, inconspicuous except for having passed security. The window rolled down a scant two inches, and Patrick peered in through the crack to see Ryan Ross wearing sunglasses and looking wary.

Patrick was going to run up to him, but Ryan leaned far back in the seat of the car, holding gloved hands out in front of him even though the window was barely open.

            “Hey, hey,” Ryan said. “Easy. I don’t want to know what’ll happen to my band if we get infected. Why so eager?”

“P-p-p-people h-ha-”

            “People have started disappearing,” Joe interjected. Patrick wanted to scream that he could do it himself, but clearly he couldn’t.

“I figured,” Ryan said. He sounded sort of bored at the idea of people literally ceasing to exist. “Give me some space, I’m getting out.”

            The bands gave him wide berth, no one wanting any accidents, but Ryan seemed well prepared. Wearing a long sleeved shirt, long pants, boots, gloves, a scarf, sunglasses, and a hat in mid-July, so the only part of his skin still uncovered was the lower half of his face. He frowned, scattered a fine white powder in a circle around himself, and bit his lip.

            “I’m going to need a hair from the first person infected,” Ryan said after being silent for a moment.       

            “Pete,” Joe said. Pete and Dirty ran up as though summoned, giggling in a way that made Patrick really not want to know whatever they had been doing. “Hair.”

            Pete nodded like this was the sort of reasonable request he got all the time, and he ran his hand through his hair, pulling a few loose strands out and dropping them inside the circle.

            “Mmm,” Ryan said. He pulled a vial of some clear liquid from behind his back, dumped it onto the hair, and a burst of gold and purple smoke rose up from the hairs in whorls.

            “That… that should be it,” Ryan said, sounding unsure.

            “Should?” Pete asked. “How can we tell?”

            “I don’t know, can you guys finally fucking understand me?” Gabe asked. Patrick froze. And then screamed.

            “FUCK FUCKING SHIT CUNT FUCK MOTHERFUCK BITCH SHIT DAMN!” he yelled, taking deep, heaving breaths. Ryan looked mildly taken aback.

            “So, all good?” he asked.

            “Motherfucking fantastic,” Patrick sighed.

            “Oh, Jesus, I’m gonna go drink some blood,” Andy said, disappearing quickly.

            “What about Mike?” Bill asked. Patrick noticed that he didn’t feel crazily attracted to Bill anymore, which was a relief.

            “Well, when did he disappear?” Patrick asked.

            “Sometime late at night? Early in the morning?” Bill guessed.

            “Then I would check in the bunks,” Ryan said, smiling slightly. He cocked his head slightly, and sure enough, the door to The Academy Is… bus slammed open, and Mike stumbled out, looking dazed.

            “I’m gonna go check on Alex,” Ryland said, looking dazed and speaking in an American accent again.

            “Any other magic problems you need me to fix? No? Cool. I’ve got an album to write,” Ryan said, giving them a two-fingered salute. “Good seeing all of you.”

            He left the dot of black ashes inside the circle of white powder and drove away quickly, and Patrick shook his head in disbelief.

            “Weirdest fucking kid you ever signed, Pete,” he said.

            “But goddamn useful, huh?” Pete asked, elbowing Patrick in the ribs and grinning at him, the same teasing grin, the same sparkling eyes. Patrick’s heart fluttered, and then he felt strangely cold. He forced a smile back at Pete, and ran back onto the bus before Pete could comment on the distress that must have been showing in his aura.

            Probably this was just in Patrick’s head. Probably lots of curses left a sort of… residue, on those cursed. Probably he was freaking out over nothing at all.

            Once he got back to the quiet bus, he found Andy drinking deeply from a mug, a slight red broth lining the top of his lip. Patrick didn’t want to talk about this, but if he didn’t talk about it now he never would.

            “Hey, Andy?”

            “Mmm?”

            Patrick sucked in a deep breath. “You feeling any… aftershocks of the curse?”

            Andy glanced at him from over the tops of his glasses.

            “Nope. I feel much better, actually. Nothing left. Why, do you?”

            “Um, maybe?” Patrick’s breathing was getting shallow, because he knew there was another explanation, but he didn’t want to think about it.

            “Are you alright?” Andy asked, making his concerned parent face. Patrick sat down and shook his head.

            “What?” Andy asked. “What’s wrong?”

            “I’m not quite over the swooning over Pete part of the curse. I mean, it’s normal to feel the after effects of a crush, right? A curse crush?” he could hear the desperation in his own voice. Andy looked very tentative as he continued.

            “I really wouldn’t know. That seems like a Ryan kind of question, don’t you think?” he said.

            “I really don’t want to talk to Ryan about this,” Patrick said. “Are you not… not feeling any of the aftereffects of this?”

            “Nothing,” Andy said firmly. He paused. “But, I mean, if you just started feeling… what you’re feeling, then it’s probably just an aftershock, like you said.”

            Patrick didn’t want to say it.

            “What if I might have felt something before the curse, then?” Patrick asked. Andy, to his credit, didn’t react outwardly. He continued to hold eye contact with Patrick, breathing deeply.

            “How long before?” Andy asked.

            “I’m not sure,” Patrick said. “I definitely felt more these past few days. It was more… obvious, but it wasn’t new.”

            “You’d felt like that before?” Andy said to confirm. Patrick nodded.

            “Do you have any guesses as to when it started?” Andy asked tentatively. Patrick tore his gaze away from Andy’s, focusing his stare on the ground.

            “It actually… last night specifically kind of reminded me of… of The Drake. Back in ‘04.” His voice had turned to nearly a whisper.

            “I don’t think that’s curse residue,” Andy said.

            Patrick inhaled deeply.

            “That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

            Patrick punched one of the shitty bus cabinets, his hand going all the way through the flimsy plywood. He screamed, half in pain and half in stupid, embarrassed anger, and kicked the wall of the bus.

            “Dude, dude, stop!” Andy yelled, grabbing Patrick’s hand before he could break the window with his scraped and bleeding hand. “Calm down, okay!”

            “Calm down?” Patrick asked. “I am the biggest fucking loser on the planet and you want me to calm down?”

            He was distantly aware that he was throwing a tantrum, breaking the bus for no reason other than that he was acting like a spoiled kid.

            “I want you to not break your hand,” Andy said, keeping his voice level. “Patrick, it’s not a big deal.”

            “It is ABSOLUTELY a big deal!” Patrick cried, and Andy held a hand up.

            “It’s not a big deal if you don’t want it to be, I mean,” Andy said. “Be rational for a sec. What changed?”

            Nothing, if Patrick was being honest. But he wasn’t ready to be rational yet.

            “I can’t ever talk to him about it,” he said, stunned at how sad the realization made him.

            “Why not?” Andy asked. Patrick laughed one hollow laugh.

            “Really?” he asked. “Have you seen him? Have you seen _me_?” he asked, gesturing down at his body.

            “Knock it off,” Andy snapped.

            “I just,” Patrick paused. “Look. Forget I brought it up, okay?”

            “If you want,” Andy said, but he sounded unhappy about it. “But know… you can talk to me about anything, if you need to.”

            “Thanks,” Patrick said. He glanced out of the window to where Pete was playing what looked like an elaborate hybrid between soccer and bowling with old beer bottles for pins. “But I don’t think there’s all that much to say.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhhhh man you guys have NO IDEA how long I've been sitting on this chapter. That said, I wanted to say a few things:
> 
> this is IN NO WAY meant to be a dig at young or new fanfiction authors, or fanfiction authors in general (especially since, ya know, I am one)  
> What it is meant to be is a critique of fanfiction that I saw around in 2007, and sort of a joke about misconceptions relating to character. That said, if the real FOB started acting the way I wrote them, they'd probably be pretty damn distressed too. I hope I didn't offend anyone, I just kind of wanted to make a nostalgia story for old fanfic tropes and also kinda mock the way I used to write. (though if I were really doing that, I'd need a character to burst into tears every five lines. I feel really lucky that all my old fics got deleted)
> 
> This chapter I have to thank my amazing beta, Doc3, as always, because she's wonderful. I also want to thank somanyfandomsiwillexplode for doing Gabe's translations for me, as I'm a pretty pathetic American who speaks English and a little mediocre french. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys are all excited for next time!  
> Chapter title by Gym Class Heroes


	12. Larger Than Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fall Out Boy is out looking for DTKs, protecting the humans of Arizona, and trying to keep up with a wildly hectic tour. But in the middle of a fight, Joe gets an... unusual injury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General Warnings:  
> the standard blood/gore/action warning for this chapter, but also heavy use of needles! If you are phobic I would not recommend!  
> Potentially Spoiler-y Warning/Apology:  
> so, for those of you that didn't discover on tumblr many months ago (sorry I'm like this) this chapter features the Backstreet Boys. I had planned this literally years in advance, but a couple of days ago, articles began to surface about a certain member of the Backstreet Boys being accused of sexual assault. I obviously am horrified and cannot condone this sort of thing, but A) I was very married to my story idea and B) this chapter has been put off so many times I did not want to stop and rewrite it. So I put Nick into the story as little as possible, and if this bothers anyone I really am terribly sorry, this was the best solution I could think of. They will not be resurfacing in this fanfiction in any major way, and if you would care to avoid mention altogether, message me here or on tumblr and I can give you all of the relevant plot points tied into the inclusion of the band.

            Andy couldn’t decide if he was more pissed off about the heat or all the damn vampires.

            Arizona was baking, the air above the asphalt rippling in the sinister way that meant you could get a second degree burn if you pressed your skin to the road. Even safe inside the recirculated air of the rental car, shielded behind inconspicuous dark windows, Andy could sense the air outside. The sun shone down balefully on the poor, bleached out ground.

            “I don’t like it out there,” he said, fidgeting under the restraint of his seatbelt. Joe made a sympathetic noise, though he didn’t turn from the road.

            “If you don’t like it, that’s probably good news for us,” he said. “No vampire in hell would go out today.”

            “No half-vampire either,” Andy muttered. “I’d probably be a drinking to kill too if I lived in fucking Arizona.”

            “I hate DTKs,” Patrick said. Even in the middle of the desert, he had pointedly worn a high collared shirt, one of Pete’s scarves, and a hoodie ready to be drawn tight around his head at any moment, so as to lessen any potential vampiric temptation. “Phoenix is kinda-sorta near Las Vegas, right? It’s in the desert too. Can’t we make Panic! do it?”

            “We can’t just make them do it, I don’t even know if they’ve ever killed a vampire on their own,” Pete said, and as soon as he said it, made a face. “Oh my god, have they ever even killed a vampire before?”

            “They must’ve,” Joe said, also making a face. “I mean, Spencer’s a wolf now. But then… shit, guys I don’t think they’ve ever killed something on their own!”

            “They could be great monster fighters when we’re not around,” Patrick said fairly. “Ryan and Spencer held their own pretty well when they were both human, and then Brendon has that whole sand-demon thing going on. I bet they’re lethal.”

            “You just don’t want to fight a vampire,” Joe said. Patrick scowled at him.

            “You wouldn’t want to fight vampires either if you smelled like a bottle of fine wine walking into a room full of alcoholics.”

            “I don’t know, I think you’re more like… vampire heroin,” Pete grinned like he had made a hilarious joke, but the only response from the rest of the band was a tiny shrug from Andy when the silence had gone on too long. Pete deflated.

            “Dude, you’re exactly like Bella in this vampire book I just read-” Pete began, and Patrick groaned.

            “What?” Pete looked affronted.

            “I do not need to hear about the latest _Interview with a Vampire_ erotica spin-off you just read,” Patrick said. “I’m having a bad enough day as it is.”

            “It’s not erotica, and it’s nothing like _Interview with a Vampire_ ,” Pete said. “It’s straight, it’s written for teenage girls, it’s surprisingly good, like, total page turner, and I can’t believe you are still going on about the erotica thing when it was one time, AND it was Jeanae’s copy!”

            “Yeah, it was Jeanae’s book, but did you ever give it back?” Joe asked. Pete glared at him, which Andy safely took to mean he did not.

            “The point,” Pete continued haughtily, “Is that you, Patrick, and you, Andy, are totally like Bella and Edward. Your blood is his own personal brand of heroin.” Pete leered.

            “I’m straightedge,” Andy said, voice dry. Patrick had crossed his arms, and his shoulders were raised ever so slightly to cover his neck more.

            The four of them were driving down the most desolate highway Andy had seen so close to a major city. He knew objectively that they weren’t far from Phoenix, that they weren’t going to be stuck out here to die in the sun, but he would feel a hell of a lot better indoors.

            At that moment, the four of them were just out on a scouting mission. There were rumours of Drink-To-Kill vampires hiding in the mountain ranges to the south of the city, and since they were in the area, they drove out, some more willingly than others, to scope out the situation.

            Andy had left Carmilla in the hands of her two live-in babysitters, Sola and Atalia, and had reluctantly gone out with his band, a few stakes hidden in his pocket just in case.

            “Anyway,” Patrick continued, “Brendon and Ryan and everyone don’t have anything to do. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a tour, and they’ve been getting high in the middle of goddamn nowhere this whole time and getting how much actual recording done?”

            Pete rolled his eyes.

            “Las Vegas is not that close to Phoenix, and they’re not even in Las Vegas right now. And Ryan’s got a lot of shit to deal with right now, with his dad and all. We’re here, and maybe there won’t be anything to worry about,” Pete said.

            “We can’t cover the entire mountain range before sound check,” Patrick grumbled. Andy noticed that he hadn’t looked at Pete once. In fact, he hadn’t looked at him properly in days. But Patrick seemed very keen to not bring up the conversation again, so Andy had let it drop, though he hadn’t stopped keeping an eye on Patrick.

            “No, we can’t,” Joe agreed. “Come on, dude, like I said, we’re just gonna check the place out, see if there’s anything fishy. The rumours might not be true, it might be a mission for another day. And it’ll be nice to be out in the open again, you know, nature, sun, real air? Not just another venue?”

            “Says the werewolf,” Patrick shot back, but he didn’t press the issue.

            Joe took a route not suggested, driving the fragile car right up to a sludgy riverbank before turning it off. Andy could feel the frigid air getting leeched away by the sun, but he ground his teeth together and ignored it. He had just fed, and he had enough staying power to ignore the bright sky, even if he would have a wicked burn the next day.

            “Are we… crossing the river?” Patrick asked, looking hesitant.

            “Well, I figured the last thing we wanted was for some park ranger with a cell phone camera to get a good look at Pete. Vampires we can handle, but a pack of teenage girls cornering us without security? Much more dangerous,” Joe said as he stepped out of the car.

            “Is it safe?” Patrick eyed the river uneasily.

            “No clue,” Joe said. “Hold this?” he tossed the car keys and his phone to Andy, who caught them with reflexive ease, and he ran into the water, splashing as he crossed.

            Joe stood in the middle of the burbling water, which was hitting him with some force around the bottom of his ribs. He shrugged.

            “Not too bad for me, but I’m a little stronger than Pete and Patrick. Should we see if it’s shallower somewhere else?”

            “Let’s just get this over with,” Patrick sighed. He held his phone and wallet over his head while he crossed, wincing as the water buffeted him, but not losing his footing. Andy made Pete go in front of him, keeping an eye on him the whole time so that if anything went wrong he could dive in after him. His worries turned out to be baseless, as all three of his bandmates made it to the other side with no problems, although none of them seemed particularly happy to be dripping with river water. Andy crossed the river quickly, mostly annoyed at the slimy squish in his shoes and thinking to himself that if they dried off today, he would definitely take them off before they crossed back over. While he was thinking, though, Joe inhaled sharply.

            “What’s wrong?” Andy asked, his voice quiet and sharp and his hand hovering over the stake in his belt.

            “Take a breath: you’ll smell it,” Joe said.

            Andy breathed in through his nose and winced, jerking backwards at the cloying scent of blood and rot that was coming from the trees in front of them, having been mostly disguised by the river on the other bank.

            “What is it?” Joe asked.

            “Human,” Andy said, and Patrick made an exasperated noise. “More than one, that’s for sure. And not well drained.”

            “I hate messy eaters,” Joe sighed.

            “That way,” Andy pointed forward and slightly to the left, where the trees were clumped together denser and their boughs were taller, thickening around the base of a mountain foothill.

            “Hope you guys are up for a hike,” Joe said, grabbing his phone back from Andy and leading the way into the forest.

            They weren’t on authorized land, so there were no trails to speak of, at least, none nearby. In truth, Andy had never really thought of trees and forests as being a part of the desert, but the thick brown-green forest in front of him was proof that he didn’t know a lot of things about desert environments.

            Still, even in the scruffy edges of the forest it didn’t _smell_ much like a forest. Andy could smell the resinous trees and the bracken and small forest creatures, but it was dryer, and smells did not cling in the air the way it did in the humidity of the midwest. Everything felt transient, blown away by the wind. The only pervasive scent was the sick and heavy rust smell of blood coming from ahead, barely masked by the trees surrounding it.

            The sun was still streaming through the trees when they reached the bodies. Or, when they reached the remains of the bodies. The dirty and mangled pile of what looked like sticks and cloth smelled overwhelmingly like blood and flesh, so Andy assumed that it was a mess of bones. Everything simply looked so dirty that it was difficult to tell.

            Andy walked over to the scattered pile carefully, trying to keep his tread light on the forest floor. There wasn’t much left to be respectful of, but he didn’t think he could keep his lunch if he snapped what he thought was a twig under his foot and it turned out to be a finger bone.

            Andy nudged one of the more intact pieces of cloth -- black, and with a manufactured whole that could have been the arm of a t-shirt. Something squished like rotten fruit under the cloth, and Andy closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his mouth. The buzzing of flies all around was nearly deafening.

            “Very messy eaters,” Patrick echoed Joe from earlier, his voice soft. “How many do you think-?”

            “At least two,” Andy said. “But it could be up to four, if they were related. And, um, if some of the bones got eaten.”

            “You can smell all that?” Pete asked. Andy shrugged in embarrassed assent.

            “I’d say it’s four,” Joe said. He had picked up a stick and was poking through the pile of remains, a look of hardened disgust clear on his face. “Unless someone here had three legs. I’ve found at least seven femurs in here. Only two skulls, though.”

            “They could’ve finished those off somewhere else,” Andy said. Pete made a theatrical gagging noise.

            “Ugh, I thought zombies were the brain eating ones.”

            “Not the zombies we’ve run into,” Patrick said dryly. He stepped carefully closer to the gore on the ground, hand fanned out in front of his nose and mouth. “But it doesn’t look, um, particularly vampiric either.”

            “This looks familiar,” Joe said, eyes narrowed. “Or… It doesn’t look familiar, but I’ve heard about something like this before.”

            “Rabid,” Pete gasped, staring at Joe. “Yeah, you have. Vampires that go crazy from immortality or solitary living, supposedly when they get uncivilized they go rabid.”

            Patrick gave them a look somewhere between horrified and disgusted. “Rabid? What, like Cujo? Vampire rabies?”

            “I’ve never heard of it,” Andy said. He had to agree with Patrick, the remains didn’t look like the carefully drained husk of a person a DTK would usually leave behind, but the few teeth marks he could make out on the bones and in the remains of the skin looked like they came from vampire fangs.

            “Imagine something with the strength of a vampire and no brain,” Pete said grimly. “And you’ve got a rabid. They’re pretty much always DTK, and that would explain what’s been going on in the woods out here.”

            Andy swallowed his disgust and inhaled long and deep through his nose. He was nearly overwhelmed with the rotten smell of the bodies, a baking low-tide and gore scent that made him feel more sick than thirsty, as blood usually did. But behind that, if he focused, he could smell a vampire. It was a familiar scent, a little colder than human, but very faint, almost entirely covered by wood and earth in the forest. He frowned, unable to focus in closer no matter how hard he tried, but he thought that the almost antiseptic vampire smell came from above. He looked up, then to the side, at the long, low mountain that lay beside them. He let out a huff of air. There was no way they were going to make soundcheck if they found anything.

            “It’s up there,” Andy said, gesturing to the side of the mountain. “Definitely a vampire. Maybe rabid, like you said. It seems… off.”

            “Let’s go check it out,” Joe said. And then, when Patrick made a face, added: “Oh, stop worrying, we’re not going to be late. Come on.”

            “Should we do something about these guys first?” Andy asked, jerking his head toward the remains. “I mean… I hate to just leave them like that.”

            “Do you want to give them Last Rites?” Joe snorted. Andy glared at him. Joe’s expression sobered, and he looked back down at the pile, his mouth twisted up in regret. “If it bugs you-”

            “It does.”

            “-I guess we could make a cairn or something. As long as we do it fast. I don’t really want this thing killing anyone else, do you?”

            Andy nodded, and he started gathering rocks with efficient speed. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to bury the nameless victims, but something about how they were ravaged-- it didn’t sit right with him. He couldn’t identify them, and maybe they should just send in an anonymous tip to authorities or something, but mostly he just wanted to give them a little respect.

            They covered the remains of the corpses in a matter of minutes, and Patrick made a show of checking his watch, which Joe categorically ignored.

            “Would you rather be hunting down a mindless vampire at night?” Andy asked, and Patrick made an annoyed noise of assent.

            The rugged mountain, scruffy with desert dwelling bushes, was not particularly steep or hard to climb, Andy thought. It was probably more difficult for Pete and Patrick, soon panting heavily in the Arizona sun, but it wasn’t as though Andy revelled in the sunlight either. Joe was the only one who seemed entirely at ease, but he kept pace with the rest of them. They were quite a distance above the tree line when Andy huffed.

            “Maybe we should go about this more logically?” he suggested. “I mean, he’s hard to, like, smell, but there has to be some sign?”

            “This place looks pretty empty to me,” Patrick said, but not out of bad temper, Andy thought. “Not just of life, but, you know, of anything. _Logically_ ,” he said the word almost mockingly, but that was as good of humor as Andy thought he could hope for, “A vampire out here only needs two things. A source of blood, and protection from the sun. And unless you see a Sunsetter Awning up here, he’d have to be somewhere else.”

            “Not if there’s a cave up there,” Joe nodded upwards, his face focused. “That’d be a good vampire lair, right?”

            “I don’t see a cave from here,” Andy said dubiously.

            “And that’s why we’re looking,” Joe said, turning around and continuing to walk upwards, effectively ending the conversation.

            “Sometimes I look at our almighty alpha and I think to myself, whatever happened to the sweet little fifteen-year-old that was afraid of touring for two whole weeks away from his mom?” Pete asked. A short distance in front of them already, Joe flipped him off, and Andy giggled into his hand.

            They hadn’t walked much longer before Andy spoke up again.

            “Maybe we _should_ leave,” Andy admitted.

            “No, hold on,” Joe said. “Do you all see that shadow up there?”

            Andy squinted. The sun was so damn bright in Arizona and there were no buildings or trees here to shield it. Mostly, Andy just saw the brownish-gold shimmering of heat waves off of rock and earth. ANd then, just barely, he noticed a spot of darkness.

            “Way up there,” Andy breathed. “But I think so.”

            “Bet a little shade looks good to a vampire,” Joe said.

            “Definitely,” Andy agreed. The sun was putting a dull ache into his bones and leeching the moisture from his throat. He wanted a drink, preferably from Patrick, but he could tough it out long enough to get back to the bus and heat something up.

            Joe looked at Pete and Patrick, the former with dark circles under his eyes and a pleading expression, the latter completely sweat soaked. All of them looked miserable. Joe sighed.

            “It’s getting late,” he admitted grudgingly. “We’ll come back after the show, when it’s cooled down a little, okay?”

            “You’re the best alpha ever,” Pete said wearily. “Let’s go take a nap until the next album comes out. No, until Panic’s next album comes out.”

            “You want to nap forever?”

            “Yes.”

            Walking back down the mountain was significantly easier than climbing up, and once they were back in the forest it was like Andy had an extra lung to work with. The forest was thin and scrubby, which didn’t block out the sun as well as Andy would have liked, but it also allowed them to find their way back to the river in record time. The dirty river hadn’t looked welcoming initially, but now, sweat soaked and exhausted, Andy welcomed the brief swim to the far bank. Pete made a face when he climbed out, self-consciously smelling his soaked shirt.

            “You think we’re gonna have time to shower before sound check?” he asked.

            “Why bother? Polluted river smells better than you normally do,” Joe said.

            “You can’t make me sad by saying that if you’re lying,” Pete replied in a sing-song voice. He peeled his Clandestine t-shirt off and tried to wring it out over Joe’s head, only for Joe to bat it away a little too hard and send it sailing down the river.

            “Pete! You can’t litter in a national park!” Patrick said, grinning even as he rebuked him. Pete sputtered.

            “Did-? I’m sorry, did we not all just see Joe do that?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andy smirked. Patrick laughed, loud and easy, the sound bouncing around the side of the desert highway.

            “Are you guys really going to make me go back there shirtless? I’m gonna get mobbed,” Pete said.

            “You kinda like getting mobbed,” Joe said. “I think you’re a masochist.”

            “You can wear my hoodie, if you want to smell like a professional hockey locker room,” Patrick said. Andy glanced at him. It was true. His hoodie was soaked in river water from the shoulders down and sweat above that. Pete made a face.

            “Ask me again when we get back to the venue,” he said.

            It was nice, Andy thought idly. It was uncomplicated, even if it was cut short to make soundcheck. It sort of reminded him of a time before everything got complicated, before they had to sneak out under marquees with their names on it, when they were just broke kids tracking things down ambiguously in a crappy public park outside of Chicago proper.

            It wasn’t as though he didn’t like Fall Out Boy being successful. But it was comforting to see that they were still so damn good when they were stripped down to just four weird guys chasing monsters.

            The hectic world rushed back as they were yanked on stage, still covered in grime, the moment they had parked the borrowed car. It was a very short soundcheck, Patrick abandoning his usual drive for perfection in haste to shower, Andy figured, which he was just as grateful for. He needed to feed, especially if they were tracking down something new and dangerous tonight.

            Andy caught Patrick by the arm as he was walking back to the bus, feeling sheepish as he gave Patrick a pleading look.

            “Already?” Patrick asked, then shook his head. “Sorry, shit, that was douchey. Just wasn’t expecting it.”

            “Sunlight,” Andy was grateful that he wasn’t prone to blushing. “It’s worse when we’re out in the sun.”

            Patrick snorted. “Yeah, it’s worse for me too. C’mon, let’s go. Should I feed the little monster too?”

            “Would you?” Andy asked, and Patrick smiled, rolling his eyes.

            “Yeah, I can’t say no to her. And donating a couple drops of blood is better than, you know, one of you losing it and sinking your teeth into my neck.”

            “One time,” Andy reminded him.

            “One time you did it, Carm’s up at seven,” Patrick said. The bus wasn’t cold enough, the air conditioning turned off while it was parked, but it was much cooler than outside, and Andy moaned as he climbed in. He poured two mugs of tomato juice while Patrick pricked his finger, then set them in front of him so he could squeeze the blood right into the mixture. Patrick made a face as he squeezed a droplet into each, then shook out his hand and sucked the blood off of his finger. He paused, finger still in his mouth, then pulled it out with a pop.

            “I’m sorry, you wanna take care of this instead?” he asked. Andy rolled his eyes.

            “Dick,” he said, putting the mugs in the microwave. Andy turned around to ask Patrick how he was doing and if he had thought any more about the Pete situation. But Patrick was gone, already in the bathroom. Andy sighed, slumping against the counter.

            Andy wanted to help, he really did, but he wasn’t sure how much he could say. He figured that grabbing Patrick by his shoulders and screaming “Pete is so obviously in love with you!” probably wouldn’t help much, not as stubborn as Patrick was. And then if he tried taking it into his own hands and telling Pete behind Patrick’s back… well, even if everything worked out, Andy was fairly certain that scenario would end with him waking up with a stake getting hammered into his chest. So there was nothing to it but to leave the whole thing alone.

            The microwave beeped, and Andy carried a mug into the back room where Sola, Atalia, and Carmilla looked like they had all fallen asleep while reading a story, the three of them nested in a jumble of blankets and Patrick’s recording equipment. Andy bit back a fond smile before crawling across the bed and nudging Carmilla awake.

            “You thirsty, baby?” he asked, and she nodded sleepily. Andy helped hold the cup while she drank, and chuckled as she fell almost instantly back asleep, her lips stained red and her face content. He was probably setting the kid up on a terrible sleep schedule with all the touring, but he felt better having her with him.

            The show went smooth, which was excellent news, given that the Live DVD was being filmed that night, and further excellent news because the four of them were still riding a post-show high as they asked the other bands to make excuses for them and drove back outside of the city.

            The very air inside the car seemed laced with electricity as the roared down the highway, driving a good fifteen miles above the speed limit so they could get there and back as fast as possible and hopefully not slow down the buses too much. Andy wasn’t entirely sure what the bus drivers thought they did, but he imagined that they had plenty to gossip about with those Fall Out Boy dudes who left every night and came back covered in scrapes and bruises.

            “So, you definitely think there’s something up there?” Pete asked. He wouldn’t stop shaking his leg, but Andy hadn’t asked him to either. He felt overwhelmed with energy too.

            “I think those bodies were barely cold and if we can stop it from killing again, we have to try,” Joe said. The car bumped its way over the uneven surface of the ground as Joe pulled it again right up to the bank of the river, a river that looked a lot less welcoming in the darkness.

            “It might be shallower downstream,” Joe said dubiously, sending a questioning glance at Andy. Joe moved his eyes to Pete and Patrick for a moment to emphasize his point, and Andy rolled his eyes in response.

            “It’s not the ocean,” Andy said. “It’ll be the same in the dark as it is in the day.” He walked into the water, still almost warm since the sun had not set too long ago. He crossed with ease, then shook a few chilly droplets off his arms when he stepped out. It was good that they would be exercising, he thought, because he was once again soaked below the ribs.

            Andy checked his phone just as Pete splashed up next to him, spraying drops of water all over and shivering theatrically.

            “Motherfucker,” he said, “I thought deserts were supposed to be warm. It’s June, for fuck’s sake.”

            “It gets cold at night,” Patrick said, drying his glasses off on the dry shoulder of his hoodie. “You know, cause of the light absorption. Or something.”

            “Man, it’s good that your band took off,” Joe said. “College is not for you.”

            Joe climbed out of the water, taller and therefore drier than anyone else. He took in a deep breath, and Andy reflexively inhaled with him. He could smell the calming night air, the three people with him, and, almost as strong as when they had left it, the trail they had made up the side of the mountain.

            “Stakes out,” Joe said. “It’s after dark, so it could be anywhere.”

            “You’ll be able to tell when it’s coming, right?” Patrick asked. He was gripping a wooden stake in his hand, but his eyebrows were pulled together in worry. Joe exhaled slowly.

            “Not if he doesn’t want us to,” he said. He drew his own stake and started back up the path.

            Andy wasn’t certain if the moon was out that night, but if it was he could not see much of it. It wasn’t pitch dark out, not for him, but he wasn’t sure how much Pete and Patrick could see.

            The four of them were walking as silently as possible, their shoes still squelching with water and leaves crackling under their feet, but it was eerily silent. A few bugs stirred, but it seemed almost too quiet. Andy couldn’t hear any other animals nearby.

            “Guys-” Andy began, and a pale shape launched out of the trees, dead silent as it knocked Andy to the ground. He felt something sharp - claws - raking into his skin and heard panting just above him.

            Andy twisted up to look at the thing. Its face was still visibly humanoid, Andy supposed. But it was drawn, too long, and with all its skin sagging. It couldn’t have been paler than the average vampire, but it looked much worse, nearly translucent, and with dark, sunken eyes. Loose skin hung down from its face, chest, arms, all over its body, unclothed. Its thin lips pulled back from ragged, yellow teeth in a horrible grimace.

            Andy kicked the creature off his chest. It flew backwards into the forest, spinning through the air with its awful white skin moving just a second behind it like loose clothing. There was barely time for Patrick to curse before the thing scrambled back onto its hands and feet and began running towards them on all fours.

            It sprung up at Patrick, jagged, dirty teeth bared as it flew. Patrick’s eyes were wide with panic, his arm shaking too hard to drive the stake into its chest and the creature was coming headfirst anyway. Instead, he slashed out with the wooden stake and managed to knock its head to the side. The rabid creature let out a pained shriek as it fell to the side.

            Patrick stumbled over to it and raised the stake over its bare back. Before he could drive it down into the creature’s heart, it spun again, spraying dirt out from beneath it and knocking the stake from his hand.

            Andy heard Patrick’s already frantic heart stutter. The thing seemed to have heard it too, as its face twisted in a horribly mangled approximation of a smile.

            Patrick kicked out at the thing, not doing much damage as his foot connected with its face, but it shocked the creature enough for him to retreat while Joe lunged forward in wolf form.

            Joe managed to sink his teeth into the creature, eliciting a horrible shriek. The thing ripped Joe away with one of its clumsy hands. Even though it looked uncoordinated as it threw Joe to the ground, Joe howled in pain. Claws, Andy thought as he looked at its fingernails, the horrible thing had ragged yellow nails that looked as sharp as its teeth.

            Andy sprang to put himself between the creature and Joe. He realized a second too late that this wasn’t the sort of creature that cared about revenge or fighting, and that no matter how bad Joe or he hurt it, it was going to go for the nearest food source.

            Andy landed right next to Joe, still a wolf with his fur standing on end, and looked out in dismay as the thing scrabbled towards Patrick again.

            Unarmed, Patrick fell backwards and Pete tried to stake it, merely grazing the creature yet again. It wailed, shoved Pete away, turned to face Patrick.

            Patrick appeared to be holding something in his shaking hand, but the thing was too lethal, too strong. Andy jumped forward at it, but this time the thing was prepared. It swung its arm out and threw him to the side, knocking him against a tree so hard that his head spun and he tasted his own blood in his mouth.

            Joe was running towards the thing, but he was too loud. There was no element of surprise, and the vampire had already spun around to face him. It jumped up to meet him rather than ducking under him, possibly thinking that the wolf was trying to steal its prey. Andy watched in horror as the two of them collided in midair.

            He realized before they hit the ground that something had gone wrong. The creature landed on its feet where Joe was lying on his side, convulsing as the creature’s pale fingers snaked through his fur.

            Andy struggled to get to his feet, had to get over there, had to stop it, but when he stood up it looked like he was trying to stare at the scene through a sheet of water. He stumbled and caught himself on a tree, still too breathless to even yell at Joe to run.

            Luckily, he didn’t have to.

            Joe was still kicking, paws scrabbling at the creature to push it off, when Patrick sank a tree branch through the monster’s back. Andy could just see the tip of black wood poking out of the front of the monster’s chest for a moment before it spurted blood out onto Joe’s fur and fell backwards. It twitched on the ground, but Andy could already tell that it was dead.

            “Sh-sh-shit!” Patrick said. His voice was somewhere between a yell and whisper, but he certainly wasn’t talking. He fell onto the ground next to the too-still body of the wolf, Pete right beside him. Andy staggered up next to them, his vision still spinning drunkenly.

            Pete tugged his hoodie off and laid it down over Joe just moments before he turned back, now shuddering in too-pale human form. Without all the fur in the way, it was easy for Andy to see the gory holes in Joe’s shoulder from where the vampire’s teeth had punctured through. His stomach turned.

            Joe sat up slowly, arms crossed over his chest. He was shaking ever so slightly, but made a point to grin up at the guys, his mouth full of blood.

            “Well that fucking sucked,” he said.

            “Jesus Christ,” Patrick hit him on his good arm. “I thought you were dead!”

            “I feel worse than I look, don’t worry,” Joe said. Andy could only hope he didn’t actually know how bad he looked. “Nice save, Rick.”

            “Anytime,” Patrick said wearily.

            “I helped,” Pete said. “I gave him the branch.”

            “Because you were so insistent on using your own stake, yes,” Patrick said. Andy wanted to be happy at the two of them bickering fondly, but… he was still focused on Joe. Joe, who was still breathing like he was scared he was going to run out of air and who was turning moonlight pale even though he wasn’t bleeding much.

            “Are you okay?” Andy asked him, his voice low.

            “I think so,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I mean, I feel like shit, but, hey, vampire venom, right?”

            Joe spat onto the ground, leaving a dark pink puddle on the forest floor. “Ugh, but I think I got a mouthful of blood. How gross is that?”

            “Can’t relate,” Andy deadpanned, and Joe laughed. He closed his eyes for a moment, still breathing hard.

            “Turn around if you still want to protect your virgin eyes; I’m getting dressed and we’re getting the fuck out of here.”

            Pete and Patrick were joking around with each other the whole walk back down the mountain, and Joe was joining in with them, but Andy felt concerned more than anything. Joe was acting almost fine, but he was still not the right color, his breathing was still labored. Andy knew he was injured, but he should heal soon. Andy kept reminding himself that Joe was going to heal quickly, that he would be fine. But he didn’t show much improvement on the walk down, only getting short of breath as Andy led them back to where they had crossed the river.

            Joe slowed as he approached the bank. He eyed the water nervously and came to a full stop just in front of the water, hands clenched tight at his sides.

            “Are you going to be alright to cross?” Andy asked. Joe’s head snapped up to look at him, almost glaring.

            “Fine,” he said. Pete had already started across, and Joe waded in after him. He gasped a little, so quiet that Andy doubted if anyone but him could hear it. Andy waited on the bank, watching Joe with a growing sense of apprehension as he slowly waded across the river, with all of his muscles tensed and a strained look on his face.

            Joe made to nearly the middle of the river, the water rushing up about his ribs when he stopped. He froze, shaking harder than he had been before. He shook his head, looked over his shoulder at Andy, his face suddenly pleading, and then he slipped.

            Joe splashed down, water spraying as his head struck the surface of the river. He didn’t cry out when his head came above the water again. The current wasn’t strong, easy to fight against, but Joe seemed limp as the river started carrying him away.

            Andy was running before his mind caught up with what he was planning on doing. He couldn’t outswim the current, but he could outrun it, yes, and if he could run just a little ahead of Joe, just a bit…

            Andy sprinted down the bank ahead of him a little ways before running into the water. He overshot just slightly, leaving him standing in the midst of the river, so much colder now than it had been earlier in the day, for a moment before he could grab Joe around the waist and drag him out of the water onto the other side.

            “What happened? Is he okay?”

            “Joe? Dude?”

            Andy pulled him a little ways past the bank, ignoring the cries of the rest of his band as they ran over. Joe’s nose was wrinkled up and he blinked up at Andy, looking more like Andy had awoken him than saved him from drowning in the middle of a desert state.

            “Take your shirt off,” Andy said. Joe giggled, the sound so weak it made Andy’s heart race.

            “Aren’t you gonna buy me dinner first?” he asked.

            Andy yanked Joe’s shirt up to his neck to look at the bite on his collar. It hadn’t stopped bleeding, but there were now lines of black leading away from each of the tooth punctures. The skin around them looked shiny and swollen and infected. Andy’s breath caught.

            “What’s with the noise?” Joe asked.

            “Whatever you do, don’t ask Pete that,” Andy muttered.

            “ANDY.”

            “We need to get you to a doctor. Quickly.”

            “What’s wrong with me?” Joe asked. His eyes were grave and intense. Andy swallowed convulsively.

            “I’d say that you’re not reacting well to vampire venom-” he began, but Joe shook his head.

            “That’s not it, I’ve been bit before,” Joe said. “I had half my fucking neck torn off, so it’s not vampire venom. Was that thing not a vampire?”

            Andy stared at Joe’s mouth while he spoke. His teeth were still stained red. Andy’s heart stuttered in his chest, and he heard Patrick gasp at almost the same time he realized it.

            “You bit him too,” Andy said. He felt woozy. “You- you must have swallowed a lot of his blood.”

            “Yeah, and it was fucking disgusting, so why-?”

            “You’re turning,” Patrick said, voice hoarse and rasping. “Oh, fuck, you’re _turning_.”

            “I’m fucking what?” Joe shouted. A handful of creatures, maybe birds, maybe bats, from the nearby trees flew away from them.

            “When a vampire drinks your blood and you drink his.” Andy could feel his heartbeat all over his body. “That’s how you turn someone. The exchange of blood.”

            “I CAN’T TURN INTO A VAMPIRE IF I’M A WEREWOLF!” The trees shook with the sound of his shouting. Andy was still struggling to breathe under waves of panic.

            “No,” he said. “No you can’t.”

            Joe stared up at him with panicked eyes.

            “So then what’s happening to me?” he pleaded.

            Andy looked around at Pete and Patrick, looking just as scared and helpless as he felt.

            “I don’t know.”

***

            Pete called Doctor Ferrum three times in a row with no answer each time. He was sitting with Patrick in the front seat, but on the passenger side. After Andy dragged Joe back to the car, they decided to divide and conquer. Andy sat in the back with Joe, keeping the wound elevated and compressed so he didn’t bleed out before whatever other weirdness kicked in. He had tried, briefly, to suck the venom out of the wound, but he said he couldn’t really taste anything special because Joe’s blood was so strong and so _werewolf_ , and worse than that, Joe started screeching in pain every time he tried.

            So home remedies definitely were not an option.

            Patrick was driving, and the good thing about the desert at night was that he could leave the pedal pressed all the way to the floor for most of it. It was two in the morning when they got back to the car, and they needed to get to LA, to Ferrum, by sunrise.

            “And if we’re not there by sunrise?” Patrick asked, the red speedometer needle already inching further to the right as he asked.

            “Anything could happen from nothing at all to him turning to dust, so let’s not find out,” Andy said.

            Pete, in the passenger’s seat, was left to iron out the details.

            But Ferrum wasn’t answering her phone.

            “FUCK,” he growled. He slammed his phone against the dashboard, not breaking it, but feeling minutely better for hearing the hard crack of plastic on plastic. He put his face in his hands and tried to breathe deeply, tried not to panic. It didn’t work well. He could still hear Joe’s labored breathing in the backseat and the dull roar of the motor underneath them that told him something was seriously wrong.

            “What do we do if we can’t find her?” Joe asked.

            “Oh, we are going to find her,” Pete promised. He would gladly break down the good doctor’s door to get results, future problems be damned. He stared at his traitorous phone, then flipped it open again, determined to make at least one call that would do some good.

            “Where are you?” Gabe demanded. “Management is starting to get frantic.”

            “We’ve got more than a minor emergency right now, Gabe,” Pete said. Before Gabe could start talking, he continued. “Look, Joe’s injured, we’re getting him help. If all goes well, we’ll meet you guys for the show tomorrow. Tell the bus to go on without us and say I had some kind of weird celebrity tantrum. Whatever you have to.”

            “Jesus, dude, you sound… is he going to be okay?”

            Pete glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of Joe’s paper-white face, pulled taut against his bones in a clearly pained expression.

            He really wished he could lie.

            “We’ll see you later, okay?”

            “I’ll take care of it,” Gabe agreed, then hung up.

            At least they didn’t have to worry about the buses. Pete supposed he could call management, but he didn’t think they had anything scheduled for the next day. God, he hoped they didn’t. He couldn’t go to an interview if Joe was…. He couldn’t lie, not even in his head, but he didn’t have to tell the truth either. He could just keep his brain quiet. Or if he couldn’t, he could fill it up with other thoughts.

            Pete called Ferrum again, fingers drumming on the window while the phone rang and rang.

            “We’re gonna find her,” Patrick said, his voice steady and sure. They must have been driving over a hundred miles an hour from the way the desert turned into a gray shaded blur around them, but Patrick appeared calm. There was fear all over his aura, but none in  his face as he held tight to the steering wheel. It was a relief to have someone keeping cool, because it felt like Pete was more in his right to panic.

            “ _You have reached the voicemail box of_ -”

            Pete snapped the phone shut, leaned back in his seat, and took some deep breaths.

            “Try calling Ryan,” Patrick suggested. “He knows a lot about magic, so he might know what we’re dealing with. It could just be a poison reaction that will go away.”

            Pete nodded, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he opened his phone again to call Ryan.

            It was three in the morning, but it only rang twice before Ryan answered, voice slurry and sleep drunk.

            “‘Lo?”

            “Do you know why I’m calling?”

            “I’m a psychic, not a telepath, but I’m guessing you’re having an emergency. Is this about Pat-”

            “NO, it’s not. Joe’s hurt,” Pete glanced over at Patrick, but he probably couldn’t hear it. Probably. Jesus. “I’ve got a question about magical physiology.”

            Ryan sighed long and low into the phone. Pete heard a bed creak on the other line.

            “Gimme a second, I don’t wanna wake anybody up.”

            Pete listed to Ryan make his way down what sounded like a very old staircase from the way it creaked. When he spoke again, he was crisp and businesslike as though they had been in a meeting at noon.

            “Okay, shoot.”

            “Say a werewolf went through the process a human would go through to get turned into a vampire,” Pete said. Ryan inhaled sharply, and even if Patrick couldn’t hear him, the two in the back with super hearing could, and Joe didn’t sound encouraged.

            “I’m going to assume you’ve already realized that that isn’t good, yeah?” Ryan said.

            “We noticed,” Pete agreed. “What do we do about it?”

            “Can you give me some more details about his injuries?” Ryan asked. “Like, how turned is he? Is he in human form? How much blood did the vampire drink? How much blood did he drink? Is the vampire dead?”

            “Jesus, can you go through that one at a time?” Pete asked. His head was throbbing and his vision was swimming. Ryan sounded a little panicked too, and Pete half-expected the car to speed up again. Of course, it was presumably already driving at full speed.

            “Human form?”

            “Yes.”

            “How much blood did the vampire drink? And how much did he drink?”

            “I don’t think either of them got much,” Pete said. “They were biting to damage, not to drink blood, so only a few mouthfuls?” Ryan breathed a sigh of relief.

            “Okay, that’s good. Is the vampire dead?”

            “Yeah, very dead,” Pete said.

            “Alright, well, we’re working with best case scenario then,” Ryan said. “When a vampire turns a human, the more both of them drink the faster the turning process goes. This means that right now you guys should have the maximum amount of time possible to find a way to fix this. If the vampire had been alive then he could’ve been thrall, and if he were a wolf we’d have a much more serious poison problem, but as it is, we’ve got time to work with this.”

            “Great, whatever, how do we fix it?” Pete asked. Ryan exhaled slowly.

            “I don’t know,” Ryan said.

            “What, you’ve got nothing?” Pete was very close to shouting.

            “Pete,” Ryan sounded too solemn, too serious to be delivering good news. “Vampires don’t turn wolves. For the good of both the species. It doesn’t happen except in cases of pretty extreme revenge. There are next to no documented cases, and I’ve only _seen_ it once or twice myself. From the best of my understanding, you just have to wait and see what happens.”

            “What happens?” Pete asked.

            “He turns or the venom kills him,” Ryan said.

            It was as though all of the air had been sucked from the tiny car. There was no noise at all but the roar of the motor in the empty night.

            “That’s it?”

            “Maybe not,” Ryan said. “Like I said, it doesn’t happen often. Joe’s stronger than most wolves. Maybe if there wasn’t much venom it’ll just burn itself out of his system. But I don’t know.” He paused, maybe waiting for Pete to say something. When Pete was silent, he continued. “Are you okay?”

            “I have to go,” Pete said.

            “I can try and see what’s going to happen if you want me to-”

            “Bye.”

            Pete let the phone drop into his lap. Silence still roared through the car. What the hell was Pete supposed to say?

            There was no noise, no outward change in the car, nothing that anyone could see other than Pete, but Joe’s aura exploded outward, frantic bright reds and yellows streaming out of him even as he lay still. It was an acute, powerful fear that made Pete physically ill to sit so close to. And Pete felt so helpless, so unable to do anything to fix it as Joe’s aura thrummed raggedly. He leaned his face against the cool glass of the window, trying to get hold of his breathing, all the while a snide little voice in the back of his head noted that if he was freaking out, how did it feel to be in the backseat?

            “Am I still going to LA?” Patrick asked. The silence hadn’t stretched for hours, but it felt like it.

            “YES,” Joe said. “Damn the teenage psychic, I want a real fucking doctor before we start picking out funeral flowers.”

            Pete giggled. It was a hysterical giggle, but it still felt like a much needed release.

            “Ryan,” Pete said between giggles, “Is twenty.”

            “Yeah, people are teenagers until they’re at least twenty-five. You’re probably still going to be a teenager when you die,” Joe smiled weakly up at him.

            By that reasoning, it sounded like Joe might be too, but Pete didn’t say that.

            “Also, my jaw hurts like all hell,” Joe said. Pete didn’t doubt that. His aura was pulsating. Pete made a face.

            “Do you want something, to, like, bite down on?” Andy asked. Joe was still for a moment, then nodded slowly. With a dubious expression on his face, Andy balled up a shirt on the floor and Joe bit down on it. His aura calmed every so slightly.

            Pete kept calling Dr. Ferrum as they drove. A distant voice in the back of his head that sounded a lot like his mom seemed to be reminding him that it was rude to call someone over and over, but he thought that rude was sort of thrown out the window when your friend was dying. Pete’s brain stuttered over the word.

            “Did Ryan say anything about the sun?” Andy asked eventually.

            The sun wasn’t rising yet, and they were speeding West and away from it, but it was getting later in the morning, creeping towards five. Pete kept his eyes trained on the rearview mirror to see if there were any signs of the sun rising. He thought the sky might be getting infinitesimally lighter, but he couldn’t tell, not really.

            He was almost a hundred percent certain that the sky was getting to be a lighter blue when his phone rang.

            Pete stared at the ringing phone for a second, not really believing it, not at first. It rang twice before Patrick took one hand off of the steering wheel to smack Pete hard in the chest.

            Pete’s hands fumbled all over the phone before he answering, shaking all over. “Hello?”

            “This is Dr. Ferrum speaking,” a pleasant female voice said, “You’ve called me ninety-eight times over the past few hours?”

            “ _YES_ ,” Pete said emphatically. “It’s me it’s- it’s Pete Wentz, I’m a friend of Patrick Stump’s, you treated him a while back? For jackal wounds?”

            “Of course, yes,” she said. “What seems to be the-”

            “My friend, Joe, please,” Pete was having trouble getting his words out, even though he had been practicing this speech dozens of times while he called. “He’s been bit by a vampire- no, turned by a vampire, but he isn’t turned yet, he’s still, like, turning, but he’s a werewolf, and we don’t know if it’ll turn him or kill him so you- please, can you fix him?”

            “I’m sorry?” Ferrum didn’t even sound clinical, she sounded chipper. “Your friend was turned by a werewolf?”

            “NO!” Pete said. “Well, yes, but a long time ago, I, fuck. Okay. He is a werewolf. Earlier today he was bit by a vampire and accidentally drank some of its blood, so he’s in the process of turning into a vampire. Maybe.”

            “I see,” Ferrum said. She finally sounded serious, at least. “All right. I’m not sure what I can do, but… bring him in?”

            “We’re on our way, yeah,” Pete said. He could feel the back of his throat closing up. She must be able to do something, right? Ferrum seemed to respond to his fear.

            “Rest assured, Mr. Wentz, I can keep him alive. I have more experience with werewolf medicine than anyone else in the world, I can safely say. I just can’t confirm how much of the change will remain in him. Vampire venom is a powerful chemical. Even if unturned, vampire bites alter the body in a permanent way. I can’t tell before I see him what will happen, but I know I’ll be able to keep him alive.”

            “You will?” Pete asked.

            “Yes,” Ferrum said. “I can promise you that. How far out are you?”

            “Hour and a half,” Pete said. Patrick revved the engine. “Um, maybe less.”

            “I’ll get the prep started in my office. Bring him in as soon as you get here and keep him in the sun once it comes up.”

            “Keep him _in_ the sun?” Pete asked.

            “Yes,” Ferrum said. “As much as you can. The sun will damage whatever vampire part of him is developing, but should also trigger the werewolf healing. It will keep him alive but might do some damage to the vampire. It will hurt, but it’ll make things easier in the long run.”

            “Okay. Anything else?”

            “Don’t let him bite anything else. He’ll want to, but don’t let him sink his teeth into anything.”

            Pete glanced into the backseat. Joe still had his mouth clamped down around the t-shirt, and Pete made a face at Andy. He mouthed ‘ _can you hear this?_ ’ at him, and Andy nodded. He eased the shirt out of Joe’s mouth. Joe glared at him, but made no protest, switching over to taking deep breaths.

            “Pete?”

            “Ah, not biting on anything anymore. Why-?”

            “His fangs are coming in,” Ferrum said. “At this point, before I can give him something a bit more intensive, I just need you to stall the transformation in any way that you can. Pete felt hysterical laughter filling his chest, but he tried to quell the sensation. He was not going to laugh at Joe right now. He was not. He was a better friend than that. But-

            “He’s teething?”

            “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Ferrum said. “I need to start prepping. I’ll see you soon?”

            “Yes, very soon, thank you,” Pete said emphatically. Ferrum hung up without saying goodbye, and Pete let out a huge breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

            There was another moment of silence, and then the tension started to dissipate.

            “You’re going to be fine,” Andy said with a weak laugh. Patrick didn’t ease off the pedal, but he cracked a smile as well.

            “God, I hope this heals all the way,” Joe said. “I am so not down to be the world’s first half-vampire/half-werewolf.”

            “We could be a half-vampire club,” Andy said amiably.

            “Or we could not,” Joe said. He winced and kept flexing his jaw, the muscles around his mouth stretching and straining.

            The sun lightened the sky in increments and brought no complaint from Joe, but as soon as actual beams of light shone over the horizon and into the backseat, he was writhing.

            “Oh fuck, oh fucking Christ, what is this BULLSHIT oh my god?” he threw his arms over his face, and Andy tugged them back down.

            “It’s gonna be a little uncomfortable,” Andy soothed.

            “A little uncomfortable? A little fucking uncomfortable? It’s like lying down on a stovetop,” he said, his face drawn up in pain. “Fuck fuck fuck, I’m actually turning into a shit-sucking vampire!” he turned to the front seat, and he wrinkled up his nose. “Also, I see what Andy was going on about, Patrick. You smell so fucking good.”

            “You get a pass because you’re in pain,” Patrick said coolly, “But comment on how edible I smell again and I will turn this fucking car around.”

            Joe seethed. Pete had no envy at all for Andy, stuck holding him in full sunlight while he groaned and writhed. His aura was still throbbing with pain, but he was doing a good job keeping his expression schooled.

            The sky was bright and shining by the time they were fighting midmorning LA traffic on the road to Ferrum’s office. Joe had gone ashen gray and he was clearly in pain, but it didn’t look like the sun was killing him.

            “How are you holding up?” Pete asked, and Joe flipped him off.

            “We’re nearly there,” Patrick said, “But you’re going to have to walk out in full sunlight, I think. I didn’t see any parking connected to her building.”

            “Well, that should be good for me, right?” Joe hissed.

            “Well, it is,” Pete said. Joe hissed again, air whistling around his teeth menacingly. Pete glanced into the backseat and quickly turned away, hoping Joe didn’t catch the look of fear on his face. Joe with fangs was not something Pete had ever wanted to see, and now that he had… they really needed Ferrum to fix this.

            Patrick rolled up to the curb and slammed on the brake. Pete stayed in his seat, waiting for Patrick to get out, and Patrick groaned and turned to face his bandmates.

            “Andy, you remember the way in, right?”

            “You’re not…?” Andy asked, and Patrick shook his head.

            “Go, hurry, I have to park and we’re kinda low on time,” he said.

            It was the only prompting Andy needed. He threw the door open and tugged Joe out into the sunlight. Joe gasped in full sunlight and his aura expanded, pulsing frantically. It was hard to see around the haze of red, but Pete thought that Joe might have been smoking a little.

            “Go with them,” Patrick almost shouted, shoving Pete, and Pete disentangled himself from his seatbelt and chased after the two of them as Andy pulled a stumbling Joe across the sidewalk. They walked at a regular pace, probably, Pete assumed, because they were scared to go faster but couldn’t bear to go slower. If the sun was scorching hot to him, he could only imagine.

            The bright lobby was lit with a South facing wall made almost entirely out of floor to ceiling windows, so it wasn’t much of an improvement coming inside. In spite of the danger, Pete couldn’t help but feel a sudden flash of shame or embarrassment as they walked up to the front desk. The lobby was beautiful, sunlit and made of spotless marble, and they were all covered in dirt and blood and overhung with a slight mildew-y smell from wading through a river twice. Pete hadn’t realized they were such a mess until he saw just how pristine the building was.

            A blonde girl sat behind the front desk, flipping through a book. Out of habit, Pete peered at the cover. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , damn, he really ought to get her number- no, now wasn’t the time. Maybe after Joe ended up being all right, though. Something to get his mind off of Patrick. Ashley wasn’t in town anyway…

            “Can I help you?” she had looked up, and looked more than a little alarmed at the sight of them.

            “We’re here to see Dr. Ferrum,” Andy said. Looking closer at them, Pete could see that Andy’s arm was wrapped pretty firmly around Joe’s chest, hooked underneath his armpits. He was holding him up almost entirely now. Pete’s stomach swooped.

            “I’m sorry? Who?” the secretary asked blankly.

            “Doctor Christine Ferrum, yea high, takes care of magical creatures, has an appointment for emergency surgery with a werewolf right fucking now, would you care for me to raise my voice?” Andy asked. The secretary picked up a white landline from her desk and pressed in numbers quickly.

            “Dr. Ferrum? Your werewolf is here,” she said. She nodded, then set the phone back down on the receiver.

            She picked up a key card from the desk and handed it over the counter. Pete took it, as Andy’s hands were full, and she nodded again.

            “Basement Level Four,” she said, gesturing to the elevator. “Turn left once you get out and it’ll be straight down the hall.”

            “Thanks,” Andy grunted. They left dirty footprints on the floor, Pete noted when they got in the elevator.

            Out of the sun, Joe let out a shuddering sigh of relief, though he was still leaning almost entirely on Andy. The agonized red in his aura dulled slightly, and he was taking deeper breaths.

            Pete felt like he should offer some words of encouragement, maybe squeeze Joe’s shoulder or something, but he had the feeling that that would just piss Joe off. Then again. Pete put a hand on Joe’s arm.

            “It’s gonna be fine,” he said, delighted to realize that he was telling the truth.

            “Fuck off,” Joe said, but he looked a little bit relieved.

            When the doors opened, it was to what looked like a real hospital, so jarring after the ritzy office setup upstairs that Pete was sure they were in the wrong place. Andy, luckily, was unsurprised, and immediately led them down the hall to the left, passing what looked like an excessive amount of doors to exam rooms for one doctor, all shut and with the lights off.

            Double doors hung open at the end of the hall to what looked like a large operation theater. A small woman looking like she was in her mid-fifties stood in the center of the room, a slightly unnerving smile on her face.

            “Ah, you must be Joe,” she said. “Here, hand him to me.”

            Andy passed Joe over to Ferrum with no hesitation, in spite of the fact that she did not look really large enough to support Joe on her own, she maneuvered him onto the table with ease.

            “Were you just dropping him off, or staying?” she asked. She put on gloves and pulled over a rolling table filled with metal instruments closer to Joe. She didn’t look at Pete or Andy, but had already begun looking Joe over.

            “Staying,” Andy said.

            “Excellent, I could use a hand here,” Ferrum said. “There’s a sink over there where you can wash your hands. Joe, can you tell me when the turning process began?”

            “Um,” Joe looked over at Pete. “Like, three AM? I think?”

            “Not too long ago, then,” Ferrum said. I understand that the sun might have weakened you slightly, but we can work with this. How’s your jaw feel?”

            “It hurts,” Joe said. He meant to sound angry, but it came out almost like a whimper. Pete soaped up hands clenched into fists. He tried to scrub faster, not that it would do anything, but it made him feel marginally more useful.

            “Can you scale your pain?” Ferrum asked. “In comparison to, say, some other kind of pain…?”

            “Not as bad as turning into a wolf,” Joe said, “But worse than wisdom teeth.”

            “That’s a good sign,” Ferrum said. “Now, we don’t want to encourage your fangs to come in, but if you want to bite down on something to ease the pain, this ought to do more help than harm.”

            Pete glanced over as Ferrum handed Joe what looked like, to him, a piece of tree bark. Even weirder, Joe bit into the tree bark eagerly, then made a face like he had bit directly into a lemon.

            “Um-?”

            “Oak bark has remarkably magical properties,” Ferrum said, not turning to face Pete as she answered his question. “It ought to speed the healing process for him. Now, Joe, have you started craving blood?”

            “A little. I mean, a very little,” Joe said, pulling the bark aside for a moment. “It just smelled good, is all.”

            “That’s fine. Taste this for me?” she gave him a cup barely bigger than a thimble, and Joe poured it into his mouth. Immediately he spat it back out, covering his mouth and staring up at her in horror.

            “That’s _blood_!” he shouted.

            “How does it taste?” Ferrum asked, holding a clipboard up at the ready. Joe made a face.

            “Disgusting, but it kind of makes me thirsty,” he said, sounding ill. Ferrum nodded. She began swabbing at the crook of his elbow with a cotton ball soaked in something that smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol. Pete and Andy stood beside where Joe lay, and the doctor pushed a syringe into the one patch of skin on Joe that wasn’t still covered in grime. She drew out blood, then walked over to a counter that ran along the wall.

            “I’m going to test a few things, in the meantime, could you two help your friend get undressed and cleaned up as best as you can?”

            Pete turned to Joe, who didn’t even look that upset at the suggestion. He lifted his arms over his head for Andy to tug his shirt off, and smirked as Pete eyed his pants warily.

            “Lucky you’re not self-conscious,” Pete said, and Joe rolled his eyes. His aura was more fear now than pain, but there was a little humor in it. It was hard for Pete to focus on anything but the blood trailing out of the corner of his mouth.

            “Being a self-conscious werewolf would be really fucking unfortunate,” Joe said, his voice still weak. Pete tugged Joe’s jeans off and tried to wipe down the worst of the mud that clung to him. He stepped back just in time for Ferrum to drape a hospital gown over Joe. Her mouth was pressed into a hard line and her aura-- there was something about her aura. She looked afraid, terrified, really, but not for Joe. Pete felt, for the first time, mildly guilty for calling so many times in a row. Maybe the good doctor was going through something just as serious.

            Ferrum pulled down on Joe’s jaw until he opened his mouth, then swabbed the inside of his cheek with a Q-Tip. She pulled out a flashlight and shined it in one of his eyes, then the other, frowning down at him.

            “All right,” she chewed on her lower lip as she examined him, then walked back over to the counter where she had put his blood.

            “Ahem.” Joe looked nervous even as he tried to speak, and Ferrum turned toward him. “Do you-? What happens if I turn into a vampire?”

            “Oh, you won’t,” Ferrum said. She turned back to her work, shuffling glass bottles around. Her body blocked the counter, but it seemed to Pete like she was mixing up chemicals together rather rapidly. It was nerve wracking to see her working on it, but at the same time, he supposed a doctor like her probably had to be her own pharmacist. “Looking at your blood sample, I’d say there’s hardly any worry at all.”

            “Really?” Joe asked.

            “Really,” Ferrum agreed. “In layman’s terms, and, bearing in mind, there’s little else to work with as there isn’t exactly a scientific classification for vampire, you’re looking particularly werewolf-y. In truth, you would probably be able to recover from this all on your own if you were careful not to drink any blood, but I can speed the process along and lessen the pain.”

            Joe didn’t look all the way relieved yet.

            “But I thought you said earlier that I could end up turning. Or dying,” Joe said.

            “I hadn’t met you yet,” Ferrum said. She turned around with another syringe, this one filled with a silvery liquid that seemed almost glowing to Pete. She pushed down on the plunger until a thin stream of liquid shot out the top, and she stepped back to Joe’s side. “I’m going to want to inject this near the wound, can you tell me where it is?”

            “Up here,” Joe said, tracing the bite marks on his collar. Ferrum nodded and injected the serum into him. Joe gasped and his eyes widened, but he seemed more shocked than pained.

            “It’s perfectly safe, don’t worry,” Ferrum said. She wasn’t lying, Pete noted gratefully, and he nodded at Joe. Joe’s shoulders relaxed as she continued. “You’re going to feel a little wired, but this’ll help fight off that vampire venom like antibodies going at a bad infection.”

            “What is it?” Joe asked.

            “Just think of it like concentrated werewolf adrenaline,” Ferrum said. “That’s the best thing for it for cases like yours. But, as I said, you would have fought it off on your own.”

            “Explain?” Joe asked.

            The door burst open and Patrick came in, looking relieved.

            “Sorry, parking in this neighborhood,” he said, waving one hand. Ferrum nodded.

            “Tell me about it,” she said. “Better than downtown New York, but you can’t say much better than that.”

            Patrick turned to Joe. “You look good.”

            “Liar,” Joe said, but he did look better than he had. Less gray than he had been even two minutes ago.

            “As I was saying, the problem with vampires turning werewolves is very similar to the problem that occurs when vampires turn human beings,” Ferrum said. While she spoke, she wiped down the area where she had injected Joe, then bandaged it. “Because, you see, werewolves in their human form and human beings are very genetically similar. As close as most primates, maybe closer in some ways. That’s why nine out of ten times their bodies will behave identically when injured or poisoned.

            “However, there are some major differences. Werewolves will respond to some toxins in a more, ah, canine way. They’re allergic to silver across the board. And the issue here is that werewolves are so much stronger than humans. I have a few theories as to why, but now’s hardly the time.”

            Ferrum was now mixing up something else at the counter, something bigger, but she kept talking. Pete could focus in better on her aura now. It was bright orange with fear, but dulled somehow, like perhaps she was working around it.

            “In any case, the strength ends up being a weakness in regards to vampire venom. The reason it’s so toxic to werewolves is that their body, like the human body, sees it as a disease, but werewolf bodies are much more capable of fighting off that kind of infection. Once the turning process has begun, well, it varies from case to case. If the werewolf in question is particularly strong, a genetic werewolf or the alpha of a large pack, perhaps, which I’m assuming you are from the physiological reaction, the body can fight off the change just like an infection.

            “If the wolf has recently been changed or is otherwise seriously injured, typically vampirism wins out. Drink this,” she pressed a stainless steel cup into Joe’s hands, and he swallowed it obediently. Calm swirls of blue spread through his aura almost immediately.

            “Specialty sedative,” Ferrum said. “It’ll be easier for you to throw the rest of this while you’re sleeping. You’ll feel less pain, and your body will be stronger. Where was I?” She pulled a stool up next to the bed and sat down, heaving a long sigh. “Right, well, the main issue occurs when the werewolf is of intermediate strength. It’s a bit hard to explain, but if the werewolf gene and vampire venom inside you reach a stalemate, for lack of a better term, then it can overwork the body to the point of death. But there are ways of overcoming this, either by taking medical help to encourage the body one way or another.”

            “Do you have situations like this often?” Patrick asked. Ferrum smiled.

            “From time to time.”

***

            “You guys don’t have to stick around,” Joe said. His eyelids were fluttering shut, but he was fighting off sleep more out of reflex than anything else. Falling asleep somewhere this strange just seemed to be begging for trouble, no matter how he tried to convince himself that he was perfectly safe.

            Ferrum had wheeled him into another, softer lit room to rest, where she insisted he stay for observation at least until their show that night. Even letting him leave that early made her mash her lips into a thin line and mutter under her breath about musicians, but Joe insisted, never mind what the rest of his band said about him being able to skip a night.

            “We’re not just gonna leave you on your own,” Pete said, but his heart wasn’t in it. None of them had gotten any sleep, and it was easy for Joe to see and feel that they were all every bit as exhausted as he was. They were all past the twenty-four-hour mark of staying awake. Probably longer for Pete, knowing him. Joe rolled his eyes.

            “I’m going to sleep, guys,” he said. “You should too, unless you want to pass out on stage.” He frowned. “You could also all probably shower.”

            “Jackass,” Patrick said fondly. “We save your life and this is the thanks we get?”

            “You smell like sewer water,” Joe said. “Go sleep, shower, apologize to management, and grab me one of Gabe’s RedBulls before the show, okay?”

            Andy, ever the logical one, was the first to give in.

            “Fine by me. See you tonight,” Andy said, walking towards the door. “Guys?”

            “Yeah, I’m convinced. We’ll see you,” Patrick said, and he tugged Pete out after him. Joe exhaled long and low after they left.

            The room he was in was kind of soulless, even by hospital standards. The lighting was soft, warmer than the operating theater, but the walls were still antiseptic white and the room was windowless, due to being in a basement. Tired as he was, it just didn’t feel like the ideal place to go to sleep.

            There was also the fact, that, tired as he was, he was still prickling with pain. It wasn’t the sharp aching that had coursed through him when the venom started to work into his system, or the burning from the sun beating down on him like a red hot poker. Instead, he felt strangely raw, like he was recovering from a particularly nasty flu and was forced to run a long distance.

            The heavy thud of his heartbeat behind his eyes told him to go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, but his mind was still racing. It wasn’t the kind of thing he especially wanted to say out loud, not when he couldn’t figure out how the hell _talking about it_ was supposed to help, but he was still terrified. It felt too much like deja vu, like he was, for the second time in his life, painfully changing into something he couldn’t understand, something that would hurt the people around him. At least werewolves could go out in the damn daylight. In spite of the reassurances and the fact that he felt much better and much less thirsty, he was still stupidly scared.

            Not that turning into a vampire was quite as bad as dying, but it would be a lot like it. Never being able to go outside in the daylight, never being able to have kids, never growing old.

            The violent thought of Marie jolted into Joe’s head. God, Marie, he needed to call her, but his phone… his phone was probably waterlogged, floating down the Gila river across Arizona. Drowning was so damn inconvenient.

            Also, it meant that he didn’t have a phone on him. He really ought to have thought of this before he sent the rest of his band off to try and get some sleep.

            The door creaked open, and Ferrum frowned at him, clipboard in hand.

            “You’re still awake?” she asked. She slipped into the room silently, letting the door click shut behind her.

            “Still kinda anxious,” Joe admitted. She gave him a warm smile and sat down on the foot of his bed.

            “That’s understandable. But you really are a prime candidate of a werewolf. You’re going to be absolutely fine,” she said.

            “Thanks,” Joe said. He didn’t feel any better.

            “If you close your eyes, I’m sure that sedative’ll kick in eventually,” Ferrum said.

            “Kinda pushy, doc,” Joe said, but he closed his eyes obediently. “So, how does someone become a magic doctor?”

            “Do you want a bedtime story?” she said with a soft laugh. “It’s an interesting story, I’ll admit.”

            “I’m curious,” Joe said.

            “Fine. Keep your eyes closed,” she said. “Have you ever heard of New Kids on the Block?”

            Joe’s eyes flew wide open. “The boyband? Like, from the eighties?”

            “Eyes closed,” she said, and Joe tried to relax again.

            “I was a medical student doing my residency at Beth Israel hospital in Boston in the late 1980’s,” she said. “Things were going fairly well for me. I was engaged to a really lovely man, I was a good student, it looked like I was going to be able to work nearly anywhere in the world when I finished my residency. Nice family, a decent amount of money left to me. Sort of charmed, now that I look back on it.

            “But all of that changed when my fiance was turned into a vampire. I know now-- or, at least, I strongly suspect I know now-- who turned him, but at the time we knew very little. He thought he was going crazy, and then when he showed me, I thought I was going crazy. Overnight he couldn’t go into the sun and he was craving blood. We were scared and ignorant, but I never thought of leaving him, not once. I was bright and competent and had some of the best medical technology in the world at my fingertips, so I decided that I was going to find him a cure.

            “So you aren’t kept in suspense while you drift off, I never did find that cure. Once transformation is complete, vampires cannot be made human again, not so far as all my years of experimenting have found.

            “But I did not know that then. I was driven and, in retrospect, a little unhinged in my goal seeking. I did research and came up with probably theories for cures, but I needed to test them on something to make sure that it wouldn’t kill him. I tried to get him to turn animals so that I could work on them, but as I said… vampire venom doesn’t work on non-humans. It just killed them. He wouldn’t turn humans, but I tried working on them anyway to see what happened. I was caught. I know now that it’s lucky, lucky I didn’t end up killing someone, but it didn’t seem lucky at the time. I was expelled, I suppose, but it felt more like getting exiled. Things got difficult after that for a moment, given that he couldn’t work days and I couldn’t work anywhere, but then… then we were found.

            “A music manager named Johnny Wright heard about me. High society gossip, I guess, that a doctor went crazy and thought vampires existed. He worked with New Kids on the Block, and they were monster fighters, much like you guys are. Of course, this business can be dangerous at times, as you clearly know, and he realized that he couldn’t make money if he was toting around five dead pretty boys. So, they needed a doctor. And he hired me. No one else was ever going to, so I learned through trial and error how to be a magic doctor.

            “And then it turned out that I was the first magic doctor. Possibly ever. So I ended up leaving Johnny eventually, but I stayed in the business. How are you feeling?”

            Joe felt somewhat jolted back into himself as she asked. He wasn’t sure if he had been drifting off, but his limbs felt very heavy, heavier even than his eyelids that he forced open. Something, he realized groggily, was wrong.

            “I’m not falling asleep,” he said.

            “No, you wouldn’t be,” Ferrum said. She was scrawling something on her clipboard so he couldn’t see her eyes. “Tried for years, but can’t find a sedative that works on werewolves that actually knocks them out. But it should be holding you down pretty well right now, and that’s all I need.”

            Oddly, Joe first felt almost relieved at the realization that something was wrong. Once he understood that there was reason to be anxious, that he was facing a threat, he could focus on how to deal with it. Unfortunately, although he realized he could open his eyes, he couldn’t move his arms or legs.

            “I’m not gonna get to my show tonight, am I?”

            Ferrum smiled at him without humor.

            “I don’t think so, no.”

            Joe didn’t bother with screaming or trying to get attention as he was wheeled out of the room and down the hall, back into the blue lit operating theater. His anxiety had mostly burned away and left him with a combination of fierce anger and determination. He did not want to close his eyes again and miss something important, but he let his vision drift out of focus as he concentrated on trying to get his bandmates’ attention. Not being with them in person was a handicap, but he was hoping without any real substance for hope that if he sent enough frantic “help” vibes, they would get the message.

            Still, in spite of everything, he was quite proud of his ability to stay calm and collected in the face of mortal peril.

            “Do I get to ask what you’re going to do to me?” he asked.

            “Certainly,” Ferrum said. She lifted him from bed to metal table with shocking strength. “I need someone to test on, a werewolf that I can experiment with to figure out what will and will not work on your kind. The problem with my line of work is we aren’t exactly rife with test subjects.”

            “And I’m guessing you can’t put up flyers on college campuses promising a few hundred dollars to poor students when you can’t specify werewolf on the application,” Joe said. His heart jackhammered in his chest, but he felt wrapped in the calm of the inevitable. Either they would come back or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing he could do from there.

            “Exactly,” Ferrum said. “I’m glad to be working with someone so reasonable.” She set about fixing an IV into his arm, but no matter how much adrenaline pumped into Joe’s system, he couldn’t lift his arms, couldn’t get his body below his head to move, to respond to anything at all. He was hoping he was broadcasting an urgent need to get his ass saved, but he didn’t feel any kind of anxiety from the other three. Knowing his fucking luck, they’d probably already passed out in the damn car. His breathing felt shallower. She'd meet Patrick and Andy before, so did she know about the pack thing? Had Pete mentioned it? Did she have a way of preventing him from communicating with them?

             His thoughts were cut off with the sickening jab of a large needle into his arm, followed almost immediately by a pulling sensation as blood started to drip into a bag at his side. One of the weirder hazards of being a werewolf-- since he'd gone through the change, he'd only had his blood drawn by Ferrum and a vampire cult. Neither was particularly pleasant.

            “So,” Joe tried to keep himself talking, tried to focus on something because any moment that he just sat and let this happen was a moment wasted. He had to think strategically. Had to focus on getting out. Had to not think about the draining sensation, the slow red drip into the plastic bag and the subtle but still noticeable weakening he could feel all throughout his body. “So. What the hell kind of testing can you get done on me between now and when my band comes back for the show tonight?”

            “That depends entirely on how the drug I’m testing affects you,” Ferrum said. Her voice came from somewhere behind Joe, and though he was already frightened, it was deeply unnerving to hear her and the soft clinks and rustles of movement without being able to see any of it.

            “If what I give you works as I hope it will, then I can make you forget all about this and send you on your way. I’m behind on a lot of cures but memory loss? Startlingly easy.”

            Her face, humourless grin and all, appeared in front of Joe’s. He flinched, closed his eyes, kept focusing. _Are you there are you guys there I need help fucking help me already wake the fuck up_.

            “Especially given that you’re already so tired. How long have you been awake? Twenty-five hours? Twenty-six? You won’t remember any of this, and really, isn’t it better that you don’t have to recall this unpleasantness?”

            Joe privately agreed, that he would rather forget this whole nightmare day and skip to the end of the tour, but he kept himself outwardly as flat and devoid of emotion as possible.

            “And if it doesn’t work?” Joe asked.

            “I have a backup plan,” she said. She unhooked the IV, swabbed the inside of Joe’s arm with alcohol and bandaged it before any blood could well up to the surface. Her hands seemed almost tender as she worked, like he wasn’t being held hostage, like he was just another patient. She wrote on the bag of blood with a squeaky marker, then paused, frozen with the bag held up in her hand before she left the room.

            “How long have you been in this business, Joe?” she asked.

            “About four years. That is, I’m assuming you don’t mean music?” he asked drily in response.

            “I don’t,” she agreed. “So if you’ve been doing this for four years, surely you’ve run into creatures that look like things they aren’t?”

            “Well that’s the vaguest fucking description I’ve ever heard in my life,” Joe said. Ferrum laughed again, a nervous noise.

            “What I mean is, you’ve run into creatures that take on magical disguises, haven’t you?”

            For some reason, Joe’s mind jumped to Andrea first, though he knew that wasn’t at all what Ferrum meant. H.H. Holmes and his second aura. The fae that looked so human on the outside and elemental once inside the seelie court.

            “I’m not sure if we’re thinking of the same thing,” Joe said. “I’ve never seen a shapeshifter, if that’s what you mean.”

            “You’re very lucky, then,” Ferrum said. “There’s nothing so dangerous as something that looks like someone you trust.”  
            Joe eyed the blood, then Ferrum. Something that looked like someone they trusted. He felt his heart rate slowly start to pick up pace again.

            “Don’t worry,” she said. “I wouldn’t do anything to the rest of your band, of course. Why learn how to treat half-vampires when there are only two in the world?

            (- _and how in the hell did she know about Carmilla Andy didn’t go around advertising her existence that isn’t normal_ )

            “-- I’ve no need for a human test subject, and, well. I’m sure fae would be useful one day, but you are much more of a pressing issue.”

            “So, what?” Joe asked. “You pretend to be me? Forever?”

            “Just long enough to convince your friends that your death was a tragic accident of absolutely no relation to the good doctor,” Ferrum said. “But don’t worry your head about that. I promise, I won’t hurt your friends, and there’s a very good chance you’ll live through this. Why, I can’t say for sure, but I’d put your odds at a high 75%. Now, let’s get your heart rate down under 100 beats per minute so that you don’t skew the results.”

            “You have a very relaxing presence,” Joe spat. He had been trying to calm down, but now he almost wanted to work himself up again just to spite her.

            Ferrum left the room, and Joe focused, intent on finding something. An escape, an answer, a way to wake his band the fuck up. His brain was scattered, though. Ferrum was right. He was exhausted and weak, and his mind was all over the place. Jumping from _how could she know about Carm?_ to _doesn’t seem like she knows about the pack thing no probably not or she’d want to study all of us together that’s good news right that’s good_ to the black comedy of _my mom was always scared being a werewolf would wind up with me being vivisected in a lab somewhere_.

            He shuffled through his thoughts. The pack bond, that had to be good for something other than just being in touch with members of his pack. Wasn’t getting more powerful the whole damn point? She said he was abnormally strong for a werewolf, yes, but she didn’t know how strong he was. Joe didn’t know how strong he was. He might not have the entire city of Chicago under him anymore, but damn, he did once and even if the power went away… maybe not all of it did. _Maybe_.

            Whatever was holding him down had been tested on werewolves, but no one like him. He forced all his thoughts into one line of thinking and concentrated like he was giving a command but this time to himself. **_Move_**.

            Nothing happened, but he felt something like a wave of electricity, a small one. Annoyance shot through him, because Joe wasn’t good with this part. Pete was good at the magic and the intuition and the bullshit about greater understanding and just sensing and feeling magic but Joe wanted it to be concrete, he wanted rules. This wasn’t a change he could physically make and he couldn’t see a difference, but for this moment, knowing it was there was just going to have to be enough.

            He focused again, thought the word “ ** _MOVE_** ” like a command, and felt the electric shock slide up his spine again and down his arm. His ring finger twitched.

            And oh, he was so fucking close. He needed to do this again, once more, because for some reason magic took well to trying things three times in a row. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his heartrate was doubtlessly higher than one hundred now, but he was nearly there. He focused once more, just trying for his right hand but positive he could get more than that.

            “Please don’t be afraid,” Ferrum said. Joe’s head jerked up, the electricity dissipating as though it had never been there. “You look stressed, but please, don’t be. I promise I’ll do my best with you. I know I’m not quite a real doctor, but I take my job very seriously.”

            Joe snorted. He was not going to let her see how disappointed, how crushed he was, but he didn’t have to be cordial either.

            “You’re not a real doctor? Thought Andy said you had every degree in the book.”

            Ferrum threw her head back with another laugh that showed all of her teeth. Joe still had sensation in his arms and legs, and he could feel as she pulled his right arm above his head and slightly to the side, then wrapped a strap around his wrist, holding it in place there.

            “Is that comfortable?” she asked.

            “None of this is particularly comfortable,” Joe said.

            “The position of your arm?” Ferrum clarified. Joe wanted to laugh at the situation, at her asking if he was fucking comfortable, but he was beyond laughing, a little beyond hysteria.

            “Fine,” he said. His voice felt dry and rasping.

            “Great,” she said. She moved onto his other arm, securing it splayed out as well, then did the same with his legs, leaving him spread eagle in the middle of the room.

            “Now,” she said, “I was commissioned by a pack of wolves to find the cure to basilisk venom in a werewolf to see if this is a viable torture method. Nasty turf war, from the sound of it. They’re on a wee bit of a time crunch, so I needed to test it on someone quickly. But, of course, to make sure it works,” she showed Joe a syringe full of a thick, silvery substance. “We’re going to have to test out some basilisk venom on you.”

            “Naturally,” Joe said. Faintly. He remembered the way the basilisk he had dealt with before spat thick ropes of venom at them, and felt a little sick to his stomach. It had eaten through everything it touched like acid, and she was going to inject it into him. His heart thudded.

            “Wolf pack in Pennsylvania?” he asked. He wanted to slow her down, to stall her, to somehow make this not happen.

            “Alaska,” she said. She pushed on the plunger, a glittery bright stream of venom shot out of the tip. It looked a little like mercury, and it sizzled angrily when it hit the floor. “This is a little more venom than the pack has in mind for a torture device, but I like to go the extra mile to make sure it’s safe to use.”

            _Move move move_ , Joe thought pleadingly to himself, but the command wasn’t working as it should, none of his muscles were responding. She pressed the thin needle into the crook of his elbow with intense focus, then pushed up on the plunger again.

            Joe hadn’t really believed it was going to happen until it did. For a second, all he could feel was shock. A moment passed. Then there was pain.

            Joe was unsure what regular acid felt like, but this burnt through his veins like grease fire. It seared and sizzled immediately underneath his skin and started crawling up his arm and into his neck. Joe immediately let out a scream that raked across his chest, but the feeling didn't abate, not even a little. The mass of pain was difficult to make sense of, close to impossible, but he could still feel the venom scrawling through his veins, not yet at his frantic heart, racing so fast on instinct that Joe knew would only make the venom spread faster.

             “It's very painful, I'm sure,” Ferrum said. “Feel free to scream as much as you like. No one can hear you.”

             Joe wanted to tell her something sarcastic, a _gee thanks so fucking much for your permission_ , but he couldn't. He couldn't even form words. The acidic pain had reached his heard and it felt like someone had started a grease fire in his ribcage, with the occasionally pop sizzle of a burst of pain somewhere else in his body. He slammed his head down against the table and took deep, shuddering breaths.

             After a minute that felt like hours, he was burning dully all throughout his body. Getting dragged through the sunlight while changing into a vampire was nothing to this. A mild sunburn in comparison. This was agonizing, a hot, angry burn everywhere with spikes of sharp pain popping around his body. His vision blurred.

            “Try and stay still, alright?” Ferrum said. Joe was still shuddering and still furious but he tried to stay still like she said. If anything she did could take this away he didn’t give a damn about making her life harder. There was another pinch in his arm and the burn started to muffle as this spread through him as well. His limbs relaxed and his heart skidded back into its slow beat, his whole body slumping in relief.

            “How did that feel?” Ferrum asked. Joe opened his eyes and saw that she was holding a pencil over a clipboard.

            Joe glared up at her without any power behind it. He could barely even organize his thoughts.

            “Joe, the faster you comply with me the faster we can get this over with,” she said. Like he was a petulant child or something. Joe’s lips curled.

            “You know that scene in the Princess Bride?” Joe’s voice sounded like hell, he hadn’t realized he’d screamed that hard. “The one where Humperdink turns the machine up to fifty? It feels like that.”

            “On a pain scale, would you say this is better or worse than your first transformation?”

            That was hard to quantify. Maybe it was worse, but nothing was ever really going to be worse, nothing was ever really going to match the fear. Still, he didn’t want her thinking she wasn’t doing enough.

            “Worse.”

            She scratched away at her clipboard, nodding to herself.

            “Alright, while I’ve got you here, let’s see if you can go again. It’s not very good torture if they’re screaming too loudly to answer any questions.”

            “Of course not!” Joe cried. His body came back to life under threat of feeling that again, and he went to squirm in the restraints before remembering that he was fucking paralyzed. _Move move move move move dammit move_.

            Ferrum jabbed the needle into his other arm this time, and even braced for the pain it hurt every bit as much as the last time. Maybe more, as it seemed to remove whatever effects the cure had had on him. It didn’t take nearly as long to feel the acidic burning in his heart. It felt like he could feel himself dissolving from the inside, getting weaker and weaker as the pain got stronger.

            The room blurred red around the edges and he thought it got quieter before he felt the relieving, smothering sensation of the cure coursing through him. He didn’t know if it was just an active imagination or not, but his lungs felt porous as he sucked in air again.

            “And now?” Ferrum asked.

            Joe didn’t respond. The red tinge hadn’t left his vision and he was shaking all over. The cure worked, so she wouldn’t kill him, right? He didn’t want to die, he knew, but his thoughts were getting disjointed, and he couldn’t make them reach his mouth.

            “Joe, can you hear me?”

            But then, if he didn’t die, how many times would he have to feel that? Vague nausea twisted in his stomach. No more.

            “Joe, please blink twice if you can hear me.”

            She might stop if she thought he was too far gone, but she might not. Joe didn’t want to gamble her thinking he was as good as dead. He didn’t know what the right answer was anymore, couldn’t twist it over in his head. He blinked twice in a row. Ferrum sighed in relief.

            “Alright, you’re doing fantastic. Now hold on, we’re going to do this one more time, okay? Just once, I promise.”

             With immense will power, Joe managed to choke out, “You've gotta be fucking kidding me.”

             Ferrum gave him a sunshiny smile before jabbing him again.

             If it were the kind of pain he could think around, maybe he could think of a way out of this. Maybe he could get his brain back into its alpha mode and force his limbs to move and fight back.  But in that moment, all his mind could properly comprehend was the searing in his blood vessels. The pain welled up under his skin and climbed up his neck and he wondered idly what kind of brain damage basilisk venom caused. If he poured hydrochloric acid on his skull, would it feel the same?

             He could sense a certain numbness creeping over him. It was slow building, insidious, but just under his nails the burn began to dull, and Joe thought without much concern that he might actually be dying.

             The heavy, industrial doors crashed open. Joe could still see, however blurrily, a group of people storm into the room.

             “Drop that!” an unfamiliar voice shouted. Joe's noises of pain had been getting steadily fainter, but he gave a protesting scream at this. What kind of sick joke was it that his rescue party was killing him?

             “I'm sure this is all very noble, but you are preventing me from curing him, you know,” Ferrum said. Joe tried to get his vision to focus, to get the room to stop spinning. Ferrum’s arms were pinned behind her back. “Either let me go and walk away or we can all watch him die.”

_Walk away walk away walk away_ , he thought. **_Please_**.

             Instead, they stood for a moment, then one of them shot out lightning fast, and it looked to Joe like he slammed his fist down onto her thigh. Someone else gasped.

             “How about you tell us what to do to help him or we can all watch you die?” a sort of nasal voice asked. Joe made a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. They injected the poor bitch with basilisk venom. He almost felt sorry for her.

             Joe could hear the sound of his faint heartbeat in his ears over everything else, but he could also hear Ferrum shrieking. Werewolf dosage had to be heavy, so he wondered if she'd even be able to get the words out.

             He needn't have worried. He felt the sickening pinch of a needle slide into his neck, a moment of nausea, and then the pain in his system began to muffle, quieting until he felt only the aftershocks of his body shaking in the restraints.

            “We did get to him in time, right?” a rough voice asked nervously. “I mean, shit, he doesn’t look good.”

            “Why don’t we ask her?” the nasal voice asked. “Hey. Is he gonna be alright?”

            “I don’t know yet,” she said weakly. “It was-” she was cut off with hacking, painful sounding coughs. “It was an experiment. I don’t know-” coughing overtook her sentence again.

            Joe, meanwhile, could feel himself steadying. His fingers were still numb at the tips, which worried him slightly, but he wasn’t really in pain anymore, only shock. He heard a soft humming next to him, and looked over to see a face just next to his, a face that was close to familiar.

            “How you doin’, man?” the guy asked. Softer spoken than the others. Joe groaned, though he meant to say “I’ve been better, and you, stranger?”

            “What can we do to help him?” Joe was losing track of all the frantic male voices, none of which were his band, damn them.

            “If you bleed him a little, the body will force the toxins out first,” she said, and then after a tearing sound, she hissed in pain. It was a little easier to see the four blurry figures crowded around her, but not much.

            “You haven’t hung around enough not to know that you can’t lie to me?” rough voice asked. “Do you even know who we are?”

            “Ferrum’s little favorites,” she said bitingly. “Yes, we’ve met bef- oh! This is a werewolf cure, it’s only helping me temporarily. Please, please, let me go and get something else, I need to treat myself.”

            “Show us your true form and tell us how to help him, and we can consider it.”

            “Epinephrine!” she said. “It’s in the cabinet and it might-- _might_ , quicken the healing process. And this spell won’t wear off for another hour at least.”

            “She’s not… Dr. Ferrum,” Joe said. His tongue felt thick. “Who?”

            “I’m her assistant! Alyssa! Now let me go!”

            “No. Where are you keeping Ferrum?” rough voice turned out to be dark haired, wearing sunglasses, and very angry looking. He held one arm twisted behind the woman’s back.

            “Please!” she yelled. Joe could see the pain on her face still.

            “You’re killing her,” he said faintly. The familiar stranger by his head squeezed his hand. “Just let her heal first, shit.”

            Sunglasses looked annoyed, but one warning glance from one of the others and he let her go. Not-Ferrum, looking significantly more haggard, stumbled over to a cabinet and began rummaging through it.

            “So, epinephrine? Just, like, an epipen?” the guy closest to Joe asked.

            “That’s a thigh injection, right?”

            “Shit, do I look like a doctor?”

            It really probably wasn’t necessary. Joe’s vision was mostly back in focus, and he was focusing on his thoughts so much that he could get his fingers and hands to move again. He did wish they would untie the restraints, though.

            “We’re gonna get you out, man,” the man next to Joe said soothingly.

            “You look familiar,” Joe said. The guy grinned a blindingly white smile.

            “Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said. The one with the sunglasses came over with yet another needle in hand (and fuck, but Joe really hated needles after today) and as though he could read his mind, said “Last one, I swear.”

            The door burst open once again as he plunged the epipen into Joe’s thigh.

***

            Though Joe couldn’t possibly have known it, the rest of Fall Out Boy felt his mental signals of distress almost as soon as he first realized something was wrong. This, unfortunately, occurred right around the time they pulled off onto the interstate in LA at midday.

            Patrick was still in the driver’s seat when he felt something shoot through him like he had been shocked. There was an anxiety, a fear from nowhere that made him clench up behind the wheel, stopping in one of the few moments he could actually move forward in that day’s traffic. He knew it more than he felt it in other way, just a sudden and innate awareness that Joe was in danger.

            “Shit, where’s the next place to turn around?” he asked out loud.

            He realized, later, that that probably sounded quite strange out of context, but it would appear that Andy and Pete felt it too, whatever it was.

            “Next exit’s in half a mile,” Pete said. Traffic was completely gridlocked, and Patrick glared at him.

            “That’s way too far,” Andy said. “This is a right now kind of thing.”

            “I know, but are you seeing other options at the moment?” Pete asked. All three of them managed to share a look- one of worry, and of acknowledgement that they all felt this, they were all on the same page. Patrick leaned on the horn, and got a chorus of answering honks in response.

            The line of cars moved forward a staggering twenty feet, then came to a dead stop again. Andy growled. Patrick could feel a thrill of fear running through him, but he couldn’t move. They inched another few feet forward, and screeched to a halt again.

            A tenth of a mile or so closer to their exit and a good five minutes later, Andy was having trouble keeping still.

            “I could walk back there faster. Not run. Walk.”

            “Yeah, you wanna vampire-run down the fucking freeway? You’ll be in more trouble than Joe is,” Pete said. Patrick snuck a look at him in the rearview mirror. Pete looked like hell. He’d put on sunglasses, presumably to hide enormous dark circles under his eyes, but he was still dirt streaked and his hair was a wreck. They probably all looked awful. No sleep and all kinds of fighting bullshit outside could do that to people.

            Patrick shot forward another ten feet.

            “Look,” Patrick said. He wanted to keep a level head, be the cool, collected one in lieu of having Joe their to be a leader. “Joe can take care of himself for a few more minutes. He’s going to be okay.”

            No sooner had the words left his mouth than a phantom pain shot up his arm, almost debilitating for a moment before some part of Patrick’s brain rationalized that it wasn’t quite real, more like he was imagining pain than actually feeling it. He had only to see Andy out of the corner of his eye to know that they had all felt it.

            “New plan,” he said. “Pete. How good are you at that glamour thing?”

            “Not very,” Pete said.

            “Assuming it’s an emergency,” Patrick said.

            “What the hell would a glamour do right now?” Pete asked.

            “Can you make the people think we’re in a police car?”

            Pete caught Patrick’s eye in the mirror and shook his head.

            “That’s too big. There’s too many people. Glamours are not my thing enough for that.”

            “But it’s an emergency!” Patrick yelled. He could still feel the pain like a tickle in the back of his head.

            “You think I don’t know that?”

            “What if it weren’t that big?” Andy asked suddenly. “What if it were smaller, but everyone could still see it?”

            “Like what?” Pete asked.

            “Sirens and lights in the windows,” Andy said. “We could be an unmarked police car.”

            Pete’s face didn’t give Patrick much hope that he could, but he closed his eyes nonetheless.

            “Pete, do you-?”

            “Shut up and let me focus.”

            Patrick couldn’t see any change. He didn’t see any lights or hear any sirens, but he saw the impossible strain on Pete’s face and saw the cars start to pull over to the shoulders of the road for them. His eyes widened and he stayed in place for one moment, then floored it, flying down the road and off the exit ramp.

            “We’re clear,” Andy said as soon as they were off the interstate. Pete slumped back against the seat, chest heaving. His breathing sounded unsteady, but Patrick had no time to turn around, all but flying down the roads as fast as the car would go.

            “You okay?” he asked without slowing.

            Pete made a noise, but didn’t say anything. Patrick wanted to turn around, see if he should properly be worried about him, but he could still feel the phantom pain itching in the back of his head.

            “Pete,” he said, sternly now.

            “Yeah,” Pete croaked out. Patrick felt brief relief, not slowing down.

            This time when he got to Ferrum’s office he hurtled to a stop right in front of the building, in a tow-away zone. He parked the car there anyway with the knowledge that that bill was going to hurt later, but assuming they didn’t need a getaway vehicle (and God, but Patrick hoped they weren’t going to need a getaway vehicle, what was his life coming to?), it would be fine.

Patrick pulled Pete out of the backseat before they ran in, taking brief stock of his friend as he did. Pete was ashen gray and his breathing was labored, but he didn’t look injured, and Patrick hoped that would be good enough.

            The three of them burst through the door just in time to see a man jamming a thick needle into Joe’s thigh. Reckless and furious, Patrick ran forward and knocked the man to the floor. He was able to wrestle the needle out of his hands mostly due to having the element of surprise.

            The guy, not much taller than Patrick and pretty furious looking, slammed Patrick over onto the floor and pinned his wrists. A deep voiced man chuckled behind him and said: “Man, looks like we barely beat your boys to it, huh?”

            “If I let you up, will you promise not to attack me?” the man asked.

            Patrick stared up at him, fear and anger replaced with confusion as he looked. The man looked really familiar. Way, way too familiar.

            “Are you a Backstreet Boy?” Patrick asked.

            “Yeah, I’m a Backstreet Boy,” he said. “So can I let you up, or what?”

            “Sure,” Patrick said. The man pulled him up to his feet and shook his hand brusquely.

            “AJ McLean,” he said, like admitting the name was somehow an embarrassment.

            “Knew I recognized you from somewhere,” Joe said faintly.

            Patrick whipped around and put a hand on Joe’s shoulder, unsure as to if he was trying to reassure Joe or himself.

            “You look terrible,” Patrick said, and Joe grinned, his eyes mostly closed.

            “Yeah, well,” he gave a hard, humourless laugh, “You should see the other guy.” He jerked his head over to the side, and Patrick looked over to the side where a similarly awful looking Ferrum was being held by a stocky blond man. Her hands looked to be tied behind her back, and the short blond guy had a cheerful expression on his face that didn’t meet his eyes.

            “Did Ferrum…?” Patrick left the question open ended, not even sure what he was asking.

            “That isn’t Doctor Ferrum,” Joe said.

            “What do you mean? That’s the same person as last time,” Pete said. Patrick saw that he was being similarly closely flanked by a backstreet boy (this one taller than Pete and also blond) as was Andy. Probably they’d all decided to attack first and ask questions later, which Patrick only felt a little bad about.

            “You’ve never met her before today, though, have you?” the one next to Pete said. (Nick? Patrick thought he remembered names from what he’d heard on the radio, the poster in the locker just next to his in high school, the SNL skits, but Christ, it had been a few years, and he took a lot of pride in not paying attention the first time around.)

            “No, why?”

            “Because it’s definitely not her aura, dude,” AJ said. “And,” he turned to Not-Ferrum, “We would _love_ to know where you put our doctor, sweetheart.”

            “Can someone, like, please fucking untie me?” Joe asked. Loudly.

            Patrick was going to get it, but AJ stepped right past him with a “Yeah, I got it, dog.”

            “What did you just call him?” Andy demanded, and AJ froze, giving Andy a panicky look.

            “Oh, shit, not like that. It’s not a werewolf thing. Kev’s a wolf too, I meant, like _dawg_. You know? Like, ‘no big thing, dawg.’ Like that.”

            “‘Dawg?’” Joe repeated incredulously. And he burst into laughter, throwing his head back against the restraints as he cackled. Patrick was laughing too, though he felt kinda bad at the flustered expression on the other guy’s face. Still. _Dawg_.

            While AJ was cutting through the restraints on Joe, Pete was asking questions.

            “So, wait, okay, you said it wasn’t her aura, so are you fae?”

            “Uh-huh. Ferrum’s oldest patients, or nearly.”

            “And Kevin’s here, even though he’s not in the band at the moment?”

            “Yeah, we’ll get back to that one later.”

            “And you guys are the Backstreet Boys?”

            “Yes, we are.”

            “That’s the one without Justin Timberlake, right?” Joe asked. AJ’s eyes narrowed as he removed the last restraint and Joe sat up, rubbing his wrists. Pete looked murderous.

            “They’re not NSYNC, if that’s what you’re asking,” Pete said. Joe rolled his eyes.

            “I don’t know what you spent the nineties doing, but I didn’t spend that much time keeping up with boy bands,” Joe said derisively. He then added: “No offense, or anything. I’m extremely grateful to not be dead or tortured.”

            “We get that a lot,” the stocky one (Brian?) said.

            “So what happened?” Andy asked.

            “Look, we’ll explain all this in a bit,” maybe-Brian promised. “But right now, why don’t we get to the task at hand?”

            With a nod, AJ crossed the room again and pressed the end of a pen knife against the throat of a woman who looked very much like Ferrum. She and Joe were both a little paler skinned than Patrick remembered them, and had enormous dark circles under their eyes. She tried to twitch backwards, but there was no room for her to go between the knife and Brian. Patrick didn’t know how to proceed, if he ought to interfere at all, so he stayed next to Joe, one hand over his, not exactly holding it.

            “Where is she?” AJ asked.

            “You won’t kill me,” Not-Ferrum said at once. AJ sighed.

            “Have we learned nothing about bluffing with me?” he asked. He slashed at her suddenly, and for a moment Patrick thought with horror that he might have slit her throat. Instead, a second passed in deep silence, and then blood began to flow from a deep gash in her arm that had ripped through her lab coat. A lab coat that was now rapidly turning red.

            “Are you going to torture me?” she asked. She didn’t seem alarmed about all of the blood, but Patrick was, a little. It was splatting against the floor like a leaky faucet, and the splashes of red made him feel a little woozy.

            “Are we gonna have to?” he asked, raising the knife once more.

            “AJ.”

            The man rebuking AJ was a little more nondescript than the rest, tall and dark haired. Patrick had no idea what his name was, and hoped they would all introduce themselves later.

            “Why don’t we just ask her?” he suggested. He stepped forward. “Alyssa, right? We won’t hurt you more, I swear, but there’s no need to keep this up. Why don’t you just tell us where Ferrum is?”

            He was sort of compelling, Patrick thought, but he also strongly suspected that there was a supernatural element to his attempt to sway her.

            “She’s in her upstairs office,” Alyssa said. Her voice was almost flat, but Patrick could hear the hopelessness of someone who had lost a fight. “Enchanted sleep. You’ll have a hell of a time waking her up this week.”

            “I’m certain we’ll manage,” the man said. “You wanna explain to us why you’re doing what you’re doing?”

            Patrick realized that though the wheedling, easygoing voice was more similar to Pete’s when he was charmspeaking someone, there was a rough edge underneath it. His calm, warm voice was somehow ragged, and hinted at the power, the domination that Joe’s did. And damn, but it would be cool if Joe could do that as well.

            “I’m her secretary, I field all her messages,” Alyssa said. “Some wolf pack wanted a new form of torture to find out info from another pack. I knew Ferrum would never go for it but they were offering a lot of money. I told them she could make it happen and then… it was perfect timing. A werewolf fell into my lap just as the spell was finalizing.”

            “And if he hadn’t, you always could have called me, right?” the man said, his voice syrupy sweet. Alyssa nodded.

            “Are you going to kill me?” she asked. She had a childish voice, Patrick realized, even though she was physically identical to Ferrum, who was in her forties at least.

            “We’ll leave that up to your boss,” the man (Probably Kevin, if he was a werewolf, Patrick thought) said. Nick made a dissenting noise, but said nothing. “In the meantime, you said Ferrum would be up in a week, yes? We’ll put you in an observation room for her to find, and I’m certain you’ll be fine.”

            He nodded at Nick, who grabbed Alyssa by her bound hands and dragged her down the hallway. He turned to the shorter man standing by Joe and he headed for the elevator like he had received an order, though Patrick was certain that nothing at all had been said.

            “Has it been a bit?” Andy asked.

            “Guess so,” probably-Kevin said. “My name’s Kevin,” (Patrick felt relieved.) “Kevin Richardson, and we’ve actually been wanting to meet you boys for a while. Sorry the circumstances couldn’ta been better.”

            Kevin also had a fairly thick Southern accent when he wasn’t doing some werewolf equivalent to charmspeak, but Patrick kind of liked it.

            “We know who you are,” Pete said. Patrick realized that Pete looked flustered, starstruck in a way Patrick wasn't usually. God, he had a boyband thing, and Patrick had to give him hell for that later.

            “I don't, actually,” Joe said. “So the Backstreet Boys? The “Want It That Way” “It's Gonna Be Me” Backstreet Boys?”

            “Well, that second one is NSYNC again, but other than that,” AJ said, paused for a moment, and added, “that's the Justin Timberlake band.”

            “Right,” Joe said, drawing out the vowels. “Joey Fatone too, right? My cousin had posters.”

            “Somebody’s cousin always had posters,” AJ sighed.           

            “We heard about y’all from Ferrum a while back and wanted to meet you,” Brian said. “Maybe not like this, but God’s got a plan for everything, huh?”

            “ _Why_ ,” Joe’s voice in Patrick’s head sounded almost as weary as when he was speaking out loud, “ _Why do they all sound like Justin Timberlake?_ ”

            Patrick wished he knew how to respond in his head, as the wolf pack thing was apparently supposed to work, but the best he could do was bite his lip to keep from laughing. Clearly Joe wasn’t excessively impressed with the other band, and while Patrick had never been a big fan, per se, well. They were still the Backstreet Boys, after all.

            “How did you guys get here at just the right time, anyway?” Andy asked.

            Nick, walking back into the room, said, “We were spying on you guys.” The rest of his band winced, but Nick seemed unabashed.

            “You were?” Pete sounded flattered.

            “You were?” Joe sounded sour.

            “Look,” Kevin raised his hands up peaceably. “Howie will be back down with Dr. Ferrum in a minute; how about we go out to lunch after we get her sorted?”

            It was a needling sort of suggestion, the sort which Patrick didn’t think they would entirely be allowed to say no to, so he nodded. Joe looked stony, but didn’t disagree. Mostly, Patrick was exhausted. He’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, and he didn’t know how many more he’d have to stay conscious for. There was the show, the wind down, any sort of dragon issue afterwards… His eyes burned just thinking about it.

            As promised, the elevator opened to Howie, slightest of all of the band, holding Christine Ferrum up with one arm, like he was just helping her walk. Her head lolled on his shoulder, but when he walked forward, Patrick saw that her feet shuffled forward with him.

            “What happened to her, anyway?” Patrick asked. “How does enchanted sleep work? I mean, like, are we talking Sleeping Beauty, or what?”

            “You’re welcome to try kissing her if you want,” AJ grinned.

            “Typically a counterspell will wake the victim up,” Kevin spoke over his bandmate. “It looks like Alyssa used a pretty basic spell, though, so we might just be able to use a serum she has on hand. Lucky for us we know this place better than most of the people who work for her.”

            “You work with her a lot?” Joe asked. Howie set Ferrum down in a chair and tilted her head back while Kevin and Brian began rummaging around in the cupboards. Patrick still hovered protectively next to Joe, and he noticed that they were all standing a bit closer together, defensive, just in case the danger had not yet passed.

            “Over half my life,” Nick said proudly. “She’s fantastic. Have you known her long?”

            “Apparently I don’t know her at all,” Joe said.

            “How old were you when you met her, then?” Andy asked. Nick shrugged.

            “Twelve, I guess. Lou hired her just a couple months after the rest of us so that we would have a doctor in case of any injuries or whatever. We had a lot of assignments back then.”

            “Ah,” Andy said, sounding like he’d understood something suddenly. “You’re who Dave Grohl was talking about.”

            “Dave Grohl mentioned us?” AJ was eager, but Patrick understood as well. The bands from the nineties, he thought, the ones he had mentioned when Fall Out Boy met him. The types of bands who were conscripted into fighting monsters rather than stumbling into it.

            Before Patrick could jump into questioning (why did they still fight monsters? Did they want to at first? Did they want to now? What had happened?) Kevin made a triumphant noise and held a small vial aloft.

            “Magical smelling salts?” Joe asked dully.

            “Similar principle,” said Brian, who was either immune to sarcasm or unaware it had happened, Patrick couldn’t tell which.

            Kevin tipped the clear liquid into Ferrum’s mouth. She twitched as she woke up, her eyes fluttering open. Joe flinched slightly, and Patrick shifted himself so that he was standing more in front of Joe than next to him. He didn’t really think that there was anything sinister about the Backstreet Boys or the real Ferrum, but he was paranoid.

            Ferrum blinked a few times, her eyes focusing on Kevin slowly, but after a moment she gave him an indulgent smile, not the clinical look Patrick remembered her having, but something almost maternal.

            “Still saving damsels in distress, Kevin? I thought you were retired,” she said. Her voice was just a creak, unused and dry, but still teasing.

            “Good to see you too, Doc,” he said just as fondly.

            While the Backstreet Boys (it was still weird that they were there, The Backstreet Boys, feeling much more like a legend than real people) tended to Ferrum, Patrick turned away from them, blocking them from Joe. He glanced at Pete and saw he was in a similar position, all of them facing in. Band meeting, he thought, with a slight quirk of his lips. Pete looked close to laughter too, and Patrick felt a painful thud of his heart against his ribs while he looked at him. He turned back to Joe quickly.

            “How are you? Really?” Patrick asked in a low voice. It didn’t really matter with a bunch of magical creatures, but courtesy and all that. Joe shrugged, then made a pained face.

            “I feel like I got steamrollered, and I still haven’t fucking slept,” Joe said. “And I’ve got a really shitty feeling that we’re not gonna have enough time to sleep before soundcheck when we get back, am I right?”

            “We can sleep when the show’s over?” Andy said. “And they filmed yesterday, so. We’ve got that going for us. Are you sure you’re-?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” Joe said gruffly. Patrick could still feel stinging echoes of pain through the bond, but Joe really did look like he was getting stronger by the second. That was encouraging.

            “So, the imposter, what did she-?”

            “Injected me with fucking basilisk venom,” Joe shuddered. “Man, I hope the little Pennsylvania dude and his snake are doing alright, because this shit is, like.” He seemed beyond words. Patrick noticed, distantly, that his own hand was clenched into a fist. Apparently, it wasn’t only angering to him.

            “Basilisk venom?” Ferrum asked. She had appeared to be mid-conversation with the Backstreet Boys, but now she turned to face them. “ _Idiot_ girl, if she’d only asked-- I need to look you over, if you’ll let me.”

            It was a bold statement, given that she could not yet stand on her own, but she was struggling to her feet even as she said it, her face bloodless with effort.

            It was Brian who pushed her back down, but Joe who said: “Really, I’m feeling better, maybe I should check in with you later. You know, make sure nothing’s stuck around in my system in a few days or something.”

            “I need to run a preliminary blood test at least,” she said. Joe looked sort of like he was going to cry, and Patrick felt the same. He was exhausted, but this wasn’t about him, he tried to remind himself. Tried.

            “How long will that take?” Joe as terse.

            “A little less than an hour.”

            “Oh you've got to be fucking with me!” Joe growled. Ferrum looked mildly shocked but then gave him a sympathetic smile.

            “It's the best thing I've got right now. And I can do it all sitting down, so you boys,” she addressed the other band, “Don’t need to throw a fit about me overtaxing myself.”

            “Look, thanks and all, but we can do this later,” Joe said.

           “Do you want to end up dead in twelve hours because you didn't take a minute to let me check the toxicity of your blood?” Ferrum asked.

           “Yes,” Joe muttered, but it was Andy who put a hand on his shoulder and said “come on, dude, get it over with.”

           While Joe sat exceptionally still and seethed quietly, and Ferrum prepped for yet another blood draw, Howie piped up.

           “Say, while you're waiting on the results we could take y’all out to lunch.”

_Y’all_ , Patrick thought to himself. _Jesus_.

           Patrick exchanged looks with Andy and Joe, looks that seemed to say they were all on the same page for letting the Backstreet Boys down gently, but unfortunately, Pete did not seem to get this same memo.

           “We'd love that!” he half shouted. “Wouldn't we love that, guys?”

           Joe, though still pale faced and in a hospital gown, looked murderous. Patrick shrugged. He wanted sleep, but if they couldn't stray too far for an hour anyway, he didn't see the harm.

           And so, fifteen minutes later, they ended up in a trendy little frozen yogurt bar with three out of five Backstreet Boys, two of them staying behind to keep monitoring Ferrum and the imposter girl.

           Patrick loaded his strawberry yogurt up with candy, hoping he could get a kind of sugar buzz to get through the next few hours. Pete appeared to take the more direct route with coffee flavored yogurt from the start, and both Joe and Andy abstained. Patrick felt self-conscious, for a moment, and then on seeing the rainbow-colored behemoth of a desert AJ had grabbed, felt marginally better.

           The entire situation was extraordinarily weird. Everyone in Fall Out Boy looked a little like roadkill, and though they were out in midday, with another band, no one seemed to notice that they looked awful, or see they were there at all. It seemed off to Patrick, but he had a theory.

           “So,” AJ said, businesslike, though also wearing enormous plastic sunglasses inside, “we are overdue for a talk with you guys.”

           “You are?” Pete looked delighted, and Patrick kicked him under the table.

            “Very,” Kevin said. “See, we meant to stop by and say something after we heard about what went down at that vampire hotel thing, but we didn’t want to interrupt y’all while you were recovering.”

            “And then when you were dealing with that weird demon cult all around the country, we were tracking the same thing but you just got there faster,” Howie added.

            “And we couldn’t really interrupt that business with the Killers, totally out of our jurisdiction.”

            “And we heard about the jackals-”

            “And the mermaids-”

            “But you guys are really fucking hard to keep up with,” AJ finished. Patrick felt something between pride and unease.

            “You’ve been keeping good track of us,” he noted.

            “Nah,” Howie shrugged. “We just heard some stuff through the grapevine. Truth be told, we weren’t trying that hard to get ahold of you until last summer, when we heard about you taking down Brandon Flowers.”

            “I don’t know if ‘take down’ is the right way to phrase it,” Joe said. There was an edge to his voice, but above that was mostly weariness. Joe was technically the cleanest member of the band, but his clothes were still river-stiffened and his hair lay almost flat with sweat. He looked like hell, even though Patrick could feel how much better he was doing. But feeling better was shifting him right back into leadership mode, defensive. “He’s still out there, enslaving the whole city of sin. Being a little bitch.”

            Pete snorted, though not as loud as the other band did, all three of them laughing loudly. Too loudly for the quiet restaurant. Patrick looked around, but still no one was looking at them.

            “Which one of you is fae?” Patrick asked suddenly. The three of them stopped laughing and stared at him, perplexed and a little wary. Even his own band was giving him strange looks, and Patrick shifted, uncomfortable again.

            “What? I can’t smell it or sense it or whatever the hell the rest of you do, and I don’t want to be left out of the loop. And one of you is fae, right? There’s no paparazzi, nobody’s staring. We’re glamoured, aren’t we?” he was unsure as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

            “I am,” AJ said after a long pause. “Half, anyway. Not like Pete. But a pretty strong half,” he said, smiling coldly. He slid his sunglasses just a little ways down the bridge of his nose to reveal eyes glowing red and flickering dully like old coals. Patrick just barely resisted the urge to throw himself backwards in his chair. He had met fae before, and no two sets of fae ever seemed to emanate the same color, but the ruby red was alarming.

            “Half?” Pete squeaked, and yeah, Patrick didn’t think that Bill’s half-fae eyes were quite so fluorescent. AJ smirked and pushed the sunglasses back up. No one else in the restaurant noticed.

            “On my dad’s side,” he said.

            “Pretty strong to glamour a whole room,” Pete said. AJ shrugged.

            “Lots of practice, royal bloodline, plus auras are kind of my specialty,” he said. “And a tip for the future, you’re gonna get much further if the glamour goes on you, not the eyes looking at you.”

            Patrick only sat back in his chair again when he felt Pete’s hand on his arm, tugging him back. Patrick sat in a more relaxed position, but kept his muscles tense. Kevin continued.

            “We wanted to meet you after the Brandon Flowers incident because we heard you boys were in a pack together,” Kevin said. He paused, and Patrick suspected it was for dramatic effect. “See, we’d never heard of another pack with only one wolf besides ourselves.”

            The words took a second to sink in, and when they did, Joe made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat.

            “Fucking figures. We can’t do anything that some boy band hasn’t done first.”

            AJ started cackling, leaning over in his chair with gasping laughter. He held up a hand and said “Stop, stop, I can’t keep this up if I’m laughing too hard, Jesus.”

            “You guys are all,” Pete waved a hand, “Pack bonded and stuff too?”

            “For, like, eleven years now, yeah,” Howie said. “We’re really sick of each other.” He was smiling, though, so Patrick figured he ought not take him too seriously. Patrick pushed his virtually untouched frozen yogurt to the side, and tried not to grin when Joe ended up grabbing it and eating from it.

            “You were following us to talk about being in packs?” Patrick said.

            “It sounds weird when you put it like that,” Kevin said. “But yes. We wanted to, I don’t know, help you if you needed help. Introduce ourselves. Groups like ours are rare. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re the only two like it ever.”

            “Twice as many as we thought there were,” Joe said.

            “Fair enough,” Howie said.

            “Got any great wisdom for us?” Patrick asked.

            “Take care of each other, be honest, and take a break if you need it,” Kevin said. “But also… remember that you’re family now. Don’t lose that. You’ve got bonds, band and pack, and that makes you close. You won’t always be grateful, but having people like that. It’s special.”

            Patrick was mesmerized with slow assuredness in Kevin’s voice, the reverent way he said “family.” He cast a glance at the rest of his band, wondering if they felt the sudden unwanted surge of emotion that he did.

            “If your manager ever tells you it’s not safe for you to have all the information he knows, fire him immediately,” Howie said.

            “Evil manager?” Pete asked.

            “Really evil manager,” AJ said. “Dr. Ferrum came through for us, thank God, but it was rough for a while there. We had a tight support system that all but disappeared overnight. Leads me to another point-- you can’t trust anyone the way you trust each other.”

            “The Dave Grohl thing,” Andy repeated, and AJ’s eyes lit up again. “He mentioned… bands that were forced into this by management. Kids sent out to sing and die.”

            “Well, we didn’t die,” Howie said.

            “Don’t ever get tangled up in Seelie Court,” AJ continued, and Patrick shuddered.

            “Trust me, we’re trying not to,” he said.

            “And,” Kevin said, his voice suddenly commanding over the other two. “Quit if you need to quit. We’re here because we want to be, but don’t ever- don’t ever feel like you have to do this because it’s your responsibility, okay? The world will go on.”

            It was clearly meant to be the last word, but AJ continued.

            “And call us if you need anything,” he said cheerfully. “One teeny band to another, we’re always happy to help. Now, ready to go find out if you’ve been given a clean bill of health?”

            “I can hardly breathe for anxiety,” Joe said. “Given that I feel fine.”

            “Better safe than sorry,” AJ was still chipper.

            The group of them made their way out of the shop, the girl behind the counter waving vaguely as the door opened. Patrick was bringing up the rear and about to leave when AJ grabbed his wrist tightly.

            “Hey,” he said. “Got a sec in private?”

            “Patrick?” Andy turned around. AJ looked expectant.

            “Give us a minute?” Patrick called. “You guys go on ahead.”

            The three of them did, which went a long ways in confirming that there was nothing wrong with these guys, or Patrick wouldn’t be left alone with one. AJ led him the opposite direction down the street and took off his sunglasses again, eyes no longer burning red but a familiar brown. Patrick’s chest ached again. Jesus, it was too easy to start thinking about Pete. About hopeless pining. AJ gave him a knowing smile.

            “You still seem nervous,” he said.

            “I’ve learned to be wary around everyone,” Patrick said. “What did you want to talk about?”

            AJ inhaled deeply.

            “Thing about being half-fae,” he said. “You don’t get all the cool powers, but you specialize in at least one. I mentioned that auras are kinda my thing, right?”

            “You did,” Patrick agreed.

            “Then you’ll know what I mean when I say you look like a freaking nuclear explosion,” AJ said. “I mean, fuck, I nearly wanna put my sunglasses back on just to look at you, except for the fact that you’re not so bad now. You’re just like that around one person.”

            A thrill of foreboding ran through Patrick as AJ gave him a knowing look. He hadn’t thought about his aura at all, about the way Pete saw what he felt for Chicago, and Jesus, if Pete had been able to see that, then-

            Patrick leaned against the wall, feeling sick. An unwelcome, unfamiliar hand touched his shoulder, and he shrugged it off.

            “Does he know?” Patrick asked.

            “I doubt it,” AJ said. “I’m good at auras, and there’s enough mixed up in yours that it’d be hard to tell if you weren’t used to looking for information there. Plus, he’s got enough going on today.” He pulled out a cigarette, and Patrick made a face, but didn’t stop him as he lit it up. “Look, I didn’t mean to freak you out, or anything.”

            “Then what did you mean to do?” Patrick spat. “Give me some Cosmo tips on ‘How to Get my Man?’” He was embarrassed, more than anything. Stupid, pining crush on Pete Wentz. Pete fucking Wentz. It was awful, and yet. How could he not? Pete was all warmth and light and laughter and so solidly there. He was, pathetic as it sounded even in Patrick’s head, his best friend. But he didn’t want the whole universe watching him crash and burn on another spectacularly failed relationship.

            “What I meant,” AJ said, “Was to tell you that you should talk to him about it.”

            Patrick laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh, but it was still funny. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

            “Cause he lights up for you too, dude,” AJ said. He took a deep drag while Patrick froze. “I try not to meddle in other people’s lives often, ‘specially not love lives, but,” he shrugged, “You two are bright together. Anyone looking could tell. Honestly, I thought you might’ve been something secret for a minute there. Both of your auras , when you’re close it’s,” he seemed beyond words for a moment. “Anyway, I’ve got this feeling, call it a hunch, I guess, that he’s not going to be the first to say something, even if he notices you being all glowy around him. You should talk to him.”

            Patrick’s heart felt too big for his chest again, this time thudding erratically. He didn’t want this, didn’t want to be falling in love, didn’t want this weird, tattooed Backstreet Boy getting his hopes up, but. But.

            “How do I know you’re not fucking with me?” he asked. AJ pointed at his eyes.

            “Can’t lie,” he said. Then: “We should go. Don’t want your band waiting for you too long. I just thought you should know.”

            AJ winked before he walked back towards Ferrum’s building, leaving Patrick there, head spinning. Patrick stood still only for a moment. He composed himself quickly and followed after, wondering vaguely what his aura looked like then. Nervous? Excited? Glistening with hope? All the descriptions of color fields in the world still didn’t really tell him what auras looked like or how they made sense, but he hoped that schooling his facial expression back into neutrality would make his aura calm down a little too.

            Joe was officially pronounced to be fine, though his vitals were a little weaker than normal. They were to keep an eye on him, not let him do anything strenuous for the next week or so, and bring him back if absolutely anything went wrong. After all of this, Ferrum paused, then turned contrite.

            “I’m truly sorry about everything that has happened here,” she said. “I hope you believe me when i say I would never hurt a patient, and I hope you can find yourself feeling safe here again.”

            It was so sincere, and so unexpected, that Patrick almost wanted to apologize for her feeling bad, and was glad that Joe spoke up first.

            “It wasn’t your fault,” he said tiredly. “I can’t promise I’ll come here alone for a while, but- yeah. Sorry you got caught in the crossfires too. Til next time?”

            Back at the car, there was a ticket for $500 stuck under the windshield, but at least the battered rental hadn’t been towed. They said their goodbyes to the Backstreet Boys, Pete hugging a little enthusiastically, and got back into the car in varying degrees of weariness. Patrick personally felt like his veins were buzzing with electricity, but he tried to look as exhausted as everyone else.

            “Time to nap before the show?” Joe asked.

            “Time to shower before sound check,” Pete corrected. “The whole tour is livid with us for going missing so we can’t step out today, but we might be able to sleep through the openers.”

            “Stellar,” Joe said.

            “I’ll drive fast,” Patrick said.

            His stomach was still full of anxiety. He was still afraid of the thought of saying something to Pete, of everything going wrong, of the dragon threatening to destroy them all, of Joe getting injured, but all the anxiety in the world couldn’t quash the hope building up within him.

            Patrick drove back to the rest of the tour as fast as he could, taking the brief silence as the rest of his band drifted off in the car to prepare himself for everything yet to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY F***ING MOLY IT TOOK ME LONG ENOUGH  
> I am SOOO sorry for the long ass wait for this chapter, I really can't explain myself. Not that it'll stop me from trying.  
> Essentially, what happened is this: I signed up for 18 credit hours of almost exclusively writing intensive classes, worked 20 hour weeks, and dived headfirst into wedding planning, all for the first time this semester. The High Way to Hell never left my mind, and I missed you guys and this story all the while. You can thank my fiancee for forcing me to take less classes next semester, so this presumably (knock on wood) will be the only big hiatus I take out of nowhere. I'll warn you next time ;p   
> Anywho, remember how every fucking time I'm late I promise to make it up to you guys with something extra and I, like, never do? Keep an eye on the blog for the next couple of days.   
> Continued from the top, I am sorry about this whole Backstreet mess. As I sort of alluded to, they're pretty important to the plot, and there will be fallout (puns!) from certain conversations in the chapters to come, so it was somewhat necessary.   
> Speaking of chapters to come, next chapter is part one of the finale! I can hardly believe we've come so far! This whole season seems like such a dream to me, which I guess is fitting, given the title and all. FAD will be upon us in no time, and then things'll get... different. But that's all stuff to worry about later.  
> As always, thank you all so much for reading, commenting, sending me messages-- all of you who read this are so amazing, and you inspire me every day to keep writing. Thank you for your continued interest in this story, and I promise you won't have to wait so long for the next chapter.
> 
> Chapter Title by Backstreet Boys


	13. Thriller (Part One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the tour heats up, every confrontation must come to a head, and prophecies must be dealt with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Peterick!

            The suits arrived by courier not five minutes after Panic at the Disco had shown up, sans exclamation point, with a very large box of “brownies” and a finished album in tow. They also arrived full of stories and excitement. As the four of them bounded up to Patrick, chattering loudly over one another and vying for his attention, Patrick was suddenly and strongly reminded of a group of siblings all trying to tell their parents something at once.

            “There was this fire elemental, up on the mountains-”

            “Fucking fire demon, and Ryan did this weird thing-”

            “The mountain _moved_ -”

            “And we heard about the thing with the dragon-”

            “Our album, we haven't sent it to the label heads yet, but-”

            “I'm very excited to see you guys too,” Patrick said mildly. Brendon threw his arms around Patrick.

            “We missed you!” Brendon said. “And we're never doing self-imposed isolation again. Or going camping.”

            “We can start a club,” Patrick said. “I'm never going camping again either.”

            “Right,” Ryan grinned. “I told them about the Evil Dead trees. Wild.”

            “But who cares about camping? You guys are going to face off with a fucking dragon!” Brendon clapped Patrick on the shoulder.

            “You here to watch or something?” Patrick asked. The other band went a little too quiet.

            “You said you were going to call ahead so this wouldn't be weird,” Jon stage whispered to Ryan, and Ryan swatted at him.

            “Uh, kinda, that was the plan, yeah,” Brendon looked abashed. “I mean- dragons, you know, it sounds so fucking cool, and we figured you guys might need a hand, so…”

            “You guys staying on my bus or Pete's?”

            “Pete's,” they all said in unison.

            “Fine.” Patrick felt weary, but fond. Maybe this _was_ what having kids was like. “Get a picture of the look on Joe's face when you tell him, yeah?”

            Brendon hugged him again and pressed a sloppy kiss onto his forehead before they left, trailed by a security guard who looked like he'd been in charge of Brendon for too long. Patrick was overwhelmed by fondness again as he watched them go, and he realized that he felt nice. Content with his friends and his band and his job and the bright blue sky above him.

            In retrospect, he should have known it was not to last.

            In any case, there was one thing nagging at him, and that was Pete himself. It seemed like too long ago, but it had only been yesterday that Backstreet Boy AJ McLean had pulled him aside to tell him that Pete loved him back. Patrick had then sworn to himself that he was going to talk to Pete, going to bring this up and maybe ( ** _maybe_** ) even do something about it. He didn't know what he would do, but maybe something. Dates seemed largely about getting to know people, and Patrick already knew Pete more intimately than anyone. But it wasn't as though this was a purely sexual thing either. So what was he supposed to say? “I love you”? It felt too sincere, too close to Patrick's heart for him to ever dare say out loud. Not with so much on the line.

            Once Patrick hit that first snag in his thoughts, everything fell apart. He didn't know what to say, how to approach the topic, didn't even know for sure that AJ hadn't been lying to him just to mess with him. Sure, fae couldn't lie, but he was only half-fae, and it might be possible. Patrick wouldn't know. He was waiting for an in, waiting for a moment when he could broach the subject-- carefully, ambiguously-- with Pete.

            It hadn't happened yet.

            Not long after Panic disappeared on their quest to bug someone else in Fall Out Boy, a man whom Patrick did not recognize from the tour approached him, package under one arm.

            “They said you were in Fall Out Boy, yeah?” the man asked. Patrick looked around, just in case he was secretly looking for Pete.

            “Um. Yeah?”

            “Sign here.”

            Patrick glanced over the clipboard he was signing on to the mostly concealed package. He couldn't quite make out the name on the box, but he realized that there was a little cartoon image of fire on it.

            “Did it say who in Fall Out Boy it was for?” Patrick asked. The courier shrugged.

            “Just said it was for Fall Out Boy,” he said. He handed Patrick the box, which was shockingly heavy, and began the long jog back to the parking lot.

            Patrick was curious about the box, and though he suspected he knew what was in it, he figured he ought to wait for Pete for the grand reveal. He carried the package into his bus and laid it on the bed. A thrill of anxiety coursed through him. There was only one week left in the tour, only one week before Azazel’s deadline, and only one week to figure out how to kill a dragon.

            What was it, Patrick wondered, with all of these bad guys setting such nice, neat deadlines?

            He texted Pete a picture of the package, and lay back in his bunk, waiting for him to come. It was both exciting and terrifying to think that he might be facing off against a dragon in a week, like something out of a fantasy story. An impossible, unbelievable high fantasy in which he was a hero.  

            Patrick was certain he knew what was in the box now, but he held himself back. It had to be the suits, flame retardant and military grade, so that they could wear them in front of the dragon's fire and not be burned to a crisp. Good in theory, though they hadn't had a chance to test it out. It was the sort of thing that would work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Ghost Busters or something-- fighting ancient magic with modern technology. Patrick picked at the corner of the box as he waited.

            When Pete burst onto the bus, he brought the entire Panic entourage with him, which was unsurprising, and Victoria, which was a surprise, though Patrick tried not to let that show. Something on the look Pete gave him made Patrick feel inexplicably nervous.

            “You ready for this?” Pete asked. He had a box cutter in hand and a gleam in his eye. Patrick nodded. Pete sliced the box open and pulled out the first of two plastic wrapped jumpsuits. He tore it out of the plastic and held it up to himself.

            Patrick had to marvel at it. Whatever the material was (Kevlar? Oven mitt cotton? Adamantium?) it was strangely pretty. It was a dark, steely gray and looked like tightly woven chain mail. It also seemed mysteriously light in Pete's hands. It was the sort of material Patrick expected a superhero’s costume would be made of, firm and flexible. There was a belt and a baldric attached to it as well, made of the same material but in black. Even just from holding it up to him, Patrick could tell that it would fit Pete perfectly.

            “Wow,” he said. Pete grinned, but didn't meet Patrick's eyes.

            “Yeah, but it gets better,” he said. He pulled a lighter out of his back pocket and flicked it to life, then held the flame up to the suit. Pete held it there for a minute and the suit remained impervious as the flames licked at its side.

            “You could walk through a flamethrower in this thing,” he said proudly. Patrick looked on in admiration. It was impressive, there was no doubt about that. And he was itching to try it on, so see what kind of damage he could do when he was indestructible. Not completely indestructible, of course, he wasn’t an idiot. But. Still.

            Patrick pulled the second plastic wrapped package out of the box, tearing it open and shaking out the suit. He held it up to him and realized almost instantly that this suit was too long for him. Significantly too long. And too thin. With a little extra room in the chest.

            “You wanna check the fit on it?” Pete asked. Asked Victoria. The pieces all made sense but for some reason they didn’t fit together in Patrick’s head, he couldn’t quite make sense of them yet because that was his suit. It had to be, as there was nothing else in the box. Sure, he and Pete didn’t have a written contract, but he thought he had made it pretty apparent his wishes to be involved in the business of dragon slaying. He had gone through the embarrassing business of admitting to Pete that he felt hurt for getting passed over, Pete had told him he would get him a suit… he wasn’t sure what he was missing.

            It came to Patrick suddenly that he was just standing there like an idiot, holding Victoria’s suit in tightly clenched hands. Pete was staring at him. Patrick swallowed, and handed the suit to Victoria. She smiled at him, but he could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew something was wrong, if not quite what it was.

            “Thanks, um. I’ll go try it on,” she said, jerking her thumb back at the bedroom in the back of the bus. Pete gave Patrick an innocent smile.

            “Thanks for grabbing the package,” he said. He shoved Patrick’s shoulder playfully, but Patrick still had not moved.

            “Is there another package coming?” he asked, already knowing the answer. Pete took a deep breath. He was still smiling, but there was a foreign coldness in his eyes.

            “No, there’s not,” Pete said. “Why?”

            “I was under the impression,” Patrick spoke slowly and clearly, “That I was also getting a suit to deal with the dragon.”

            “Plans changed,” Pete said brusquely. He crushed the cardboard box down flat and put it in the bus trash can. No one in Panic looked like they wanted to be there, pressed against the walls of the bus like Pete and Patrick were taking up all of the center of the floor. Patrick’s fists were clenched. Pete kept talking, no longer facing Patrick. “Victoria said she wanted to be a part of it, so I got her measurements. We’re gonna be training for the rest of the week, and next time we get a shot at it we’re gonna try and take down the dragon. Why, do you mind?” he asked.

            There was a time not so long ago when Patrick’s first reaction would be to punch Pete as hard as he could in the nose and only breathe easy again when he heard the crunch of his nose. As it was, he still shoved Pete from behind so that Pete fell headlong into the side of the bus. Pete turned around with no hint of his earlier fake smile on his face. He was going to have a raised lump on his head later, and the thought made Patrick savagely happy.

            “You’re full of shit!” Patrick yelled. It wasn’t exactly the eloquent take-down he imagined in his head where he outlined exactly how goddamn shitty it was that Pete would bait and switch him like this, get his hopes up and then put him on the sidelines for his own protection like everyone else, but it got the job done.

            “What?” Pete demanded. Patrick was again aware of his audience, of Brendon’s hand snaking out to grab Ryan’s when Patrick stepped forward with his fists clenched tight, but he didn’t yet care.

            “You _know_ what, asshole!” Patrick cried. “There was an agreement? I’m shorter than Andy and a better fighter than you, so why wouldn’t it be me, remember?”

            “Jesus, don’t be such a fucking baby,” Pete said, anger coming through his otherwise condescending tone. “You’re really going to throw a tantrum about who gets to kill a monster?”

            It was more than that, Pete knew it was more than that. But Patrick wasn’t ready to plead, instead focusing on his anger rather than the humiliation that was threatening to come out.

            “You’re really going to keep hedging around the truth like that?” Patrick spat. “I know what you’re doing. Is the truth that bad?”

            Pete looked closed off. Like someone had snapped shut the storm windows behind his eyes.

            “You’re just embarrassing yourself,” Pete said. “Look, you’re… you’re not as durable as anyone else. For fuck’s sake, you’re just human, Patrick. If it’s such a big deal to you, order your own.”

            “YOU KNOW I CAN’T!” Patrick yelled. The Honda Civic Tour had one week left, and in the time it would take to order something custom like that the dragon would be dead and gone. And he would still be just some fat, weak human, trailing along after everyone.

            Maybe it shouldn’t matter to him so much. He had killed vampires, he contributed to fighting monsters as much as anyone in the band. But this was more important. It was the one real chance to graduate past being handled with kid gloves. Something he thought Pete understood innately, because he thought Pete understood him innately. He took a deep breath.

            “Forget it,” he said. He stalked across the bus toward the exit, slamming his feet as he walked and taking pleasure in the way Pete moved a little closer to Panic. Patrick stopped with his hand on the door, glaring back at Pete, who still didn’t look sorry or regretful. “Have fun saving the world, asshole. I’ll try not to get myself killed between this bus and the next.”

            He tried to slam the door, but it was so light that all it did was rattle against the frame.

***

            For a faery that supposedly couldn’t lie, Pete was pretty good at keeping the truth from people. Joe lived on a bus with him, shared thoughts and headspace with him through the pack bond, and saw Pete all the time, but he didn’t realize until late in the afternoon that something was wrong.

            Pete had told Joe that he wanted to practice fighting, to practice dragon slaying after sound check, so Joe met up with him behind the venue. Pete was suited head to toe in something thick and gray, as was, to Joe’s surprise, Victoria. She looked much more nervous than he did, and it took Joe a minute to realize that Patrick wasn’t there at all.

            “Hey,” Joe said. “Um, anyone else coming?”

            “Nope,” Pete said, a fake smile spread across his face. Once Joe focused, he could feel all sorts of emotion pouring out of Pete. Anger, regret, and an overwhelming amount of fear. He reached out in his head for Patrick, and there he could feel anger and embarrassment, mostly directed at Pete. So, something had happened, and Joe doubted it was Pete finally confessing his feelings.

            “Vicky,” Joe nodded at her. “I didn’t know you were going to be here. So, wait, no one else is helping you guys learn how to slay a dragon?”

            “Not today,” Pete said. “Patrick and Andy are on their bus, some of the others are busy getting high with Panic. Looks like we’re the only ones in class today.”

            “Looks like it,” Joe said. Pete seemed to be avoiding his eyes, so Joe couldn’t ask him what the hell was going on yet, but he knew it could be nothing good. He couldn't bring it up with Vicky still around, so he tried to focus on training.

            “So, dragon slaying,” he raised one eyebrow at the two of them. “You're still planning that whole stab it through the roof if the mouth thing?”

            “Unless you know a better way to penetrate dragon scales,” Victoria said.

            “Mm-hm.” Joe glanced over at Pete again, but Pete was determined not to look at him. Joe sighed.

            “So the most important thing is keeping yourself safe. The suits may be flame retardant, but that doesn't mean it's safe for either of you to just stand directly in the line of fire, alright? You need to keep clear of the flames as much as you can by ducking, jumping, or hiding behind something else, got it?”

            “What would we hide behind if we get that close to it?” Victoria asked.

            “Uh, if you’re in its mouth?” Joe raised his eyebrows. “Couldn’t say. Um, under its tongue maybe?”

            “Thanks for the advice,” Vicky rolled her eyes. “Crawl under the dragon’s tongue. What a fucking plan.”

            “Look, I’m here to help with the stabbing part,” Joe said. “If you think you’ve got it, I can leave.”

            “No,” Pete said firmly. “Where are we aiming? How do we do it?”

            Joe thought about that. He never thought he’d have to teach someone to stab, as it always seemed fairly intuitive to him. Still, there were things he wished he’d known going into fighting monsters, some things that could help in a fight.

            Things that Patrick already knew.

            “I’m gonna be perfectly honest: I don’t know that much about what the inside of a reptile’s mouth looks like,” Joe said. “But for the roof of the mouth the soft part is… further back? I think? That’s how human mouths work, so… good luck with that. As for stabbing, meat is always a little bit, ah, meatier than you think it’ll be, so we ought to find something thick for you to stick your swords through. Hopefully once you’re, you know, in the mouth of the monster, there won’t be too much skill needed, but you still have to put a lot of force behind your sword.”

            Pete and Vicky held out the swords they planned on using, and Joe went through the process of showing them how to thrust the swords upwards, a weird angle for him even with his experience. Then, after breaking for water and finagling some supplies out of security, he returned with sandbags to hold above their heads for stabbing practice. Pete and Victoria took turns swinging, slashing, and stabbing upwards, poking holes in the thick bags of sand. Victoria was strong, if a little uncoordinated, and Pete seemed determined, though Joe could feel the emotions swarming inside him. Pete looked steadfast and courageous, but he felt frightened and out of his depth.

            The sun had nearly set by the time Joe threw the last sandbag to the side, all of them emptied of their contents from Pete and Victoria’s efforts. Joe felt a little exerted for once, and also obscurely proud of himself and his band. It wasn’t often that they ran headlong into danger with a plan, much less practiced for their dramatic confrontations. Maybe they were finally growing into mature adults.

Maybe Pete was still hiding something from him.

            “Good job, both of you,” Joe said. “Um, same time tomorrow? We should get down to the venue. Show’s gonna start soon.”

            “Yeah,” Victoria wiped sweat and sand off her forehead and high-fived Joe. “Thanks man. See you in a bit.”

            She started walking back towards the building, but as Pete moved to follow Joe stuck his arm out, bracing across Pete’s chest and holding him in place.

            “What did you do?” he asked.

            “Why do you assume I did something wrong?” Pete sputtered.

            “Very fae answer of you man, what happened?” Joe asked.

            Pete looked at the ground, surly. The sun was setting behind the venue, orange light still bleeding around it like a halo. And under a thick layer of fear, Joe could feel the guilt seeping back up into Pete’s consciousness.

            “I told Patrick I would order a suit for him and I didn’t,” he said. He wasn’t meeting Joe’s eyes, but he sounded sure of his decision. A lot of things clicked into place for Joe all at once, and he wanted to groan. It was so them, this stupid tangle of emotion and embarrassment.

            “There a reason?”

            “Patrick wanted to have his shot at the dragon. He’s the right size, and a good fighter,” Pete said. It really was getting late, so Joe began slowly walking back towards the venue, making sure to walk just slightly in front of Pete so that he couldn’t try to run away.

            “That explains why you said you would get him the gear,” Joe said. Not questioning, but leading. He caught sight of Brendon and Patrick in the distance. They were laughing, but Patrick still looked wound up.

            “Yeah, love to talk, but I’m going to talk to someone else,” Pete said, suddenly ducking forward past Joe. Joe reached out to stop him, but Pete was jogging, nowhere near Patrick, from the looks of it. Joe considered following him but dropped it.

            Something was wrong, he just didn’t know what.

            Backstage, none of the previous anger Joe had felt radiating from Patrick was present. He was acting a little cool and oddly formal, but otherwise normal. He hunched over his guitar and waved vaguely at Joe when Joe tried to say something to him. So he was no help at all.

            There was little time for Joe to mull over his bandmates’ personal drama, as Panic took up quite a lot of space, both figuratively and mentally. Brendon was bouncing around the room and kept nearly overturning racks of guitars, which took up a fair amount of Joe’s attention. And then, before he knew it, they were on stage, and he couldn’t exactly bring it up in front of thousands of screaming fans.

            It wasn’t until the four of them were being shuffled back to the bus, surrounded by security like they were the president with an army of secret service agents, that Joe was able to lock his hand around Patrick’s arm and get a word to him.

            “Can we talk?” he asked, and Patrick turned his gaze icy cold, but he nodded, looking annoyed.

            “Come onto our bus whenever,” he said brusquely, and Joe nodded. Better than nothing.

            It took longer for security to deflect the crowds that night. But finally, as soon as the parking lot sounded like it had been cleared of teenage fans, Joe left Pete to the mercy of Panic at the Disco. He sprinted across the parking lot, throwing himself into Andy and Patrick’s bus without knocking, and slid down the door. Carmilla shrieked his name, and he grinned up at her. He ruffled his hair and asked aloud: “Patrick in the back?”

            He had meant to ask Andy, but Sola was the one who nodded, jerking her head towards the back room while still bouncing Carmilla up and down and cooing. It all felt strangely domestic and quiet, and Joe almost felt guilty for interrupting. But he had a job to do. As a pack leader, band member, and friend, he was pretty sure he was contractually obligated to deal with Pete and Patrick’s bullshit, much as he’d love to ignore it.

            “Knock knock, bitch,” Joe fell onto an empty spot on the back bed. Patrick was curled up in a corner, one headphone in and the other dangling down, so Joe knew he could hear him. The rest of the bed was covered in recording equipment, microphone boxes and electric keyboards stacked precariously on one another. “You busy?”

            “Obviously,” Patrick said, not looking up from the laptop. Alone, it was easier to see that he was smoldering.

            “Pete’s being a bitch?” Joe guessed.

            “Two for two.”

            “I feel like I’m missing something,” Joe said.

            “I was under the impression that I was going to be fighting the dragon too, but apparently not,” Patrick said. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he spoke, slamming onto the keys with almost enough force to break them.

            Joe sighed. Delicate, he needed to be… delicate.

            “Is this about more than just fighting a dragon? Which is kind of a weird macho pissing match for a dude like you to be in anyway?” he asked. He did not roll his eyes, much as he wanted to.

            “No. Or... I don’t know, maybe,” Patrick slammed the laptop shut. “It’s more like… if everyone in the Justice League handled Batman with kid gloves because he didn’t have super strength, you know? He’s still Batman. He doesn’t need to be protected by Superman.”

            Joe raised an eyebrow.

            “You’re Batman in this scenario?”

            “Shut up,” Patrick looked embarrassed, but he smiled, very slightly. “You know what I mean. It’s humiliating.”

            “Look, dude, there are like five bands on this tour,” Joe said. “Lots of people are fighting monsters and not slaying a dragon. You think my being three inches taller than Pete is gonna make a difference inside the mouth of a goddamn dragon? It’s not. Nobody’s doubting your ability to kill the monsters, okay?”

            Patrick’s grin split all the way open, and though he rolled his eyes, he looked significantly happier. “Yeah, okay.”

            Joe was all set to leave and call Marie before he finally got some fucking sleep, but there was more. He almost wished he was a shitty friend so he wouldn’t have noticed. However.

            “There’s something else?” he sighed. He hated getting involved in people’s business. In any case, Patrick looked down as soon as he said it.

            “It’s stupid,” he said, gruff. Joe wasn’t going to say anything else to push him, but he also didn’t move from his space on the bed. He picked up a box for a microphone and tried to read it, but the label was mostly in Japanese. He was on his third box when Patrick spoke again.

            “Am I just imagining it, or is Pete acting weird?” he asked. Joe laughed.

            “Weirder than usual?” Patrick was silent, and he sighed. “Yeah, I think so. But it’s not really my place to talk about it, so you should ask him yourself.”

            “He’s pissed at me,” Patrick said.

            “You probably deserve it,” Joe said. He stood up and stretched. “Did you use physical violence on him recently for something that did not warrant physical violence?”

            “Well…”

            “Yeah, good luck with that. I’d apologize before interrogating him,” Joe waved on his way out the door. “Just use your words and he’ll come around.”

            “Wait.”

            Joe turned, and Patrick held out a pair of headphones to him. “Tell me what you think of this?”

            Moments of peace on tour were rare and wonderful things. Though he had been in a hurry to get back to his own bus, Joe lost himself in the music, picking out places it could be improved as he heard it and noting it as the song went on. He settled himself down into the bed and listened, and probably could’ve spent the whole night passing the headphones back and forth with Patrick if it weren’t for their interruption.

            Joe was midsong, eyes closed and head swaying to the beat when the floor beneath him tipped suddenly to the side, throwing him off the bed and onto the ground. The whole room looked like it had just collapsed, suddenly cockeyed as books and boxes and instruments crashed around him and on top of him. For a moment, Joe didn’t even feel pain, just the sharp shock radiating through him even as all the clutter of the bed was still falling down around him.

            With a creak and a deep, industrial sound of metal being ripped, the bus lurched again, crashing back into an upright position. The contents of the room shuddered again, and then stilled. Joe, still frozen on the ground, finally felt a jolt of pain burn up through his legs, echoing through his bones. He looked up at Patrick as he realized that neither of them made a sound. Patrick looked back at him, still sitting on the bed but clinging to the sheets with white knuckles. His face was a scared reflection of Joe’s, bloodless and too shocked to feel anything else.

            Joe was silent for a moment more, as though waiting for the bus to move again. The guitars were probably damaged, and the laptop definitely was, but Joe didn’t think he had anything worse than bruises. Still, the bus hadn’t been moving at all, and even if they were, that wasn’t the kind of shaking that came from hitting a pothole. Something strong had done that.

            “You okay?” Patrick asked.

            “Uh-huh,” Joe jumped to his feet, though his legs were shaking. “What are the odds that was just a freak accident?”

            Outside the bus, there came a dry and guttural roar. It sounded like a rush of flames consuming a whole a tank of gasoline, but there was an animalistic undertone to it. Joe and Patrick glanced at the window just as it lit up with a yellow orange blaze.

            “Shit shit _shit_ ,” Joe growled. He ran out of the backroom even as the roaring of dragon fire echoed around the bus, reverberating against the flimsy metal walls.

            Sola and Carmilla were still seated at the tiny table on the bus. Sola was frozen with shock while Carmilla was starting to cry. The table was on the side of the bus closest to the flames. Joe scooped up Carmilla and dragged Sola to her feet, pulling her to the exit.

            “Come on, come on, we’re getting out,” he said.

            “Do we want to be out?” Sola asked.

            “Just because we fight monsters doesn’t mean we have a fireproof bus,” Patrick said. He was just behind Joe, so Joe left getting the girl out to Patrick, while he took the screaming baby and ran out of the bus.

            Andy and Patrick’s bus was getting torched, just as he suspected. The dragon stood just on the other side of it, steadily shooting flames against the side of the vehicle like it was slow cooking them. Maybe that was the plan. Joe had no time to focus on whatever the dragon was thinking, if it even _was_ thinking… All of his attention was drawn to the dragon itself.

            The creature was massive; titanic compared to the tiny little thing they had fought before. This dragon had to crouch to breathe flames onto the bus. It looked like it had crawled out of a Godzilla movie. A few inches really wouldn’t make a difference, Joe realized, because the dragon’s head was roughly the size of a car. Joe swallowed shakily and clutched Carmilla tighter against his chest, barely noticing her screaming in his ear.

            “Keep moving!” Patrick shouted at him. A second later Joe did, turning and running after him with the little girl. He kept glancing over his shoulder, feeling like he was stuck in a horror movie and just waiting for the monster to notice that they weren’t in the bus anymore. The bus it appeared intent on burning to a crisp.

            With yet another shriek of metal protesting as it tore, and the quieter squeal of rubber on cement, Joe saw the now charred bus spin across the parking lot, moving in a slow, grinding circle until it smashed into his and Pete’s bus.

            It left absolutely nothing between them and the dragon.

            Out of time to come up with a plan, Joe ducked behind a heavy piece of machinery that looked like it might’ve been used to construct the stage. The guttural fire-starting roar rumbled throughout the parking lot again, and the whole left side of Joe’s field of vision filled with flames. Above the roar of the fire, he could hear people screaming, but he could worry about other people once he got Andy’s kid out of the literal line of fire.

            The second the flames died down, Joe sprinted across the parking lot, hoping to get to the venue, the other bus, or just somewhere indoors before the fire started up again. He glanced over his shoulder as he was running, saw the head of the dragon reeling back again. He put on a burst of speed, ducked behind his tour bus, and felt heat graze his back as he fell to the ground, sheltered from the flames just in time.

            People must have been running and screaming, but Joe couldn’t hear anything other than his own breathing and the sound of Carmilla crying. He could only see in front of him. The kid in his arms kept him from losing his head completely, and he forced himself to turn around and keep his eyes focused on the dragon.

            Ice white, the enormous head of the dragon turned from side to side as it looked around. As it did so, it knocked people and golf carts out of its way. Joe couldn’t even see most of its body through the darkness. He had to do something, tell it to go away, fight it, anything, but he had a kid in his arms and the dragon was enormous. They weren’t ready to deal with the dragon yet, but he had to figure something out. Quickly.

            Joe set Carmilla down on the ground and stepped out in front of the dragon, gun drawn and praying he could get close enough to shoot into the roof of its mouth. Once he was directly in front of it, he made to step forward. Suddenly however, the dragon shot off the ground and up into the night sky. It flapped its wings and wind rushed down against the ground, pushing Joe onto his ass as he watched it fly away.

            “Motherfuck,” he muttered. “Jesus fucking-”

            His tirade was prematurely ended when he heard someone yell, somewhat shrilly: “What the _shit_ was that thing?”

            Joe glanced over at the noise and sighed. Keeping magic from Mark Hoppus was about to get a lot more difficult.

***

            Patrick was of the opinion that looking abashed was, at the moment, a basic human decency. They had, after all, been conspiring to keep the whole world of myth and magic a secret from +44 during the entirety of the tour. Despite this, no one in the band looked upset, least of all Mark Hoppus, even though he had a peeling red burn on his nose from where his face got too close to a jet of _fucking dragon fire_.

            No, Mark looked delighted.

            “So you guys fight monsters? That’s why you’re all so weird?”

            “Well, I’m sure it’s not the only reason we’re weird, but it’s definitely part of it,” Joe said.

            “Fuck that’s so cool,” Mark said.

            “But you said lots of bands do this, this,” Travis waved his hand a bit, not coming up with the proper words. “This monster hunting _thing_. How have we never heard of it before?”

            “I guess people were trying to keep it from you,” Patrick said. “The thing is, you’re safer not knowing. Knowing about magic attracts it to you. It’s dangerous.”

            “It’s cool as fuck,” Mark corrected.

            “That dragon was going to kill you,” Pete said, one eyebrow raised. Mark shrugged.

            “It didn’t,” he said.

            “Anyway, to make a long story short,” Joe said, “Some fans sold their souls to see us on tour, and in exchange, Pete’s metaphysical third parent made this dragon thing to murder the entire tour.”

            “Only one of us sold our soul,” Atalia said.

            “And we didn’t agree to murder!” Sola added.

            “Close enough!” Joe said. The girls crossed their arms in perfect unison. Patrick really wanted to figure out someday how girls could move so in sync.

            “The point,” Pete said, “Is that the dragon is dangerous and it would be in your best interest to stay away from it. All of you.”

            Mark, though he nodded through Pete’s whole statement, just said: “Dragon. So fucking cool.”

            Patrick looked at the rest of his band and could see they collectively decided to give it up as a lost cause. +44 seemed pretty invested in talking about how cool the whole thing was, and Patrick wanted to leave them to their fun. Magic was cool, sometimes. They might as well enjoy it.

            The whole band, plus Panic, Sola, and Atalia, crammed onto Patrick and Andy’s bus. The tour outside was still buzzing with knowledge and fear of the _fucking dragon_ after them.

            Jesus, they were never going to be able to hire new techs, now that all the ones working now knew they slayed monsters. Or maybe they’d have to hire all new techs? Patrick wasn’t sure what would be better. His head hurt, and his eyes still burned from being too close to the jet of dragon fire.

            An exhausted silence filled the bus for a few minutes while they sat down, a few of them getting up and getting tea, or, in Andy’s case, blood. Andy was clutching Carmilla to his chest the whole time, bouncing her slightly while he heated up blood. His grip on her was white-knuckled the whole time, keeping her pressed against him. He had hurtled up to Joe, wordless and arms out for her the second the dragon flew away and had not let go since.

            “That was fucked up,” Brendon said eventually.

            “Don’ fuckin’ swear,” Carmilla said softly, her face pressed into Andy’s shirt. Atalia snorted.

            “So that was big,” Joe said. He and Patrick both glanced at Pete looking for some kind of answer. Pete’s face was dark as he hunched over the tiny table. He looked shadowed and heavy, and Patrick felt sticky with guilt. He not so subtly scooted closer to Pete around the table, just close enough that he could feel the heat from Pete’s body. Close enough that Pete could close the distance if he wanted to. There was one moment of stillness, and then Pete inched towards him, pressed against Patrick’s side. He leaned his head on Patrick’s shoulder and hummed, and Patrick automatically wrapped his arm around Pete, twining his fingers in his hair.

            _Reckless_ , a part of his brain told him. _You’re being reckless_.

            But he wasn’t, not really. This was how he and Pete always acted. Wouldn’t it be stranger if he stopped? He hoped so. He was loathe to scoot away from Pete now, warm and needful as he was.

            “Do we go on with the plan?” Andy asked. “I mean… we already knew what we were going to do before this. What’s changed?”

            “What’s changed is we need to get more proactive about this,” Joe said. “Like, we were clearly underprepared for a dragon attack.”

            “It didn’t hurt anyone,” Patrick said. “I think it was just meant to shake us up.”

            “Or to mock us,” Joe said. Where Andy was scared and Pete was dark, Joe was intense, an army general hardened and ready to fight. “It’s obvious that we’re not ready to take on this thing, not at a moment’s notice. We have to be seeking it out. If we find it before it finds us, that’s our only chance.”

            “So, dragon hunting?” Brendon asked. “That sounds cool. Can I have some of what you’re having, Andy?”

            “This is blood,” Andy said. Brendon wrinkled up his nose and shook his head. “Anyway, let’s assume you’re right. How would we hunt down a dragon?”

            “I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s pretty big,” Joe said. “I feel like tracking it isn’t going to be that difficult.

            “Funny,” Andy said. “But it’s also magic. I’m sure there’s some bullshit magic reason why this will end up being harder than you think.”

            “That’s… fair enough,” Joe admitted. “Pete, what do you think?”

            Pete was still staring down at the tabletop, eyes unfocused.

            “Pete,” Patrick said, nudging him with his knee. Pete glanced up, not so much jerking out of his daze as drifting out of it. Pete coughed a little, sitting up straighter.

            “We need more information about it,” Pete said, then glanced at Patrick as if looking for confirmation.

            “You’re the one that kept insisting dragons weren’t real,” Joe said. “It’s not as though we can go to Barnes and Noble and start taking notes on a copy of _Harry Potter_.”

            Patrick, glancing at Pete and the hard lines of his face, had a sneaking suspicion that he knew how Pete planned on getting information. He didn’t like it, but still… Pete was right. They needed to know more.

            “It didn’t kill anyone tonight,” Pete said. “Why not? I think it wanted our attention. I think it wants me to get ahold of someone.”

            “Is that safe?” Joe asked.

            “Not really, but,” Pete shrugged. “You got a better idea?”

            They were silent. Jon shifted in his chair and stage-whispered: “Who are we getting ahold of?”

            “Pete’s metaphysical demon dad, keep up,” Brendon said.

            Patrick snorted, and Pete’s solemn face broke out into a very small smile. He felt warm and soft at Patrick’s side, soft enough that Patrick almost felt ready to forgive him for that morning.

            “So, you’re calling home,” Ryan said. “When are you going to do it?”

            “No time like the present, right?” Pete asked.

            “Here?” Sola asked, wide-eyed. “Now? We’re not ready, he wants you to call, this is probably a trap--”

            “I don’t see how,” Pete said. “He can’t really make outgoing calls, and scary as he likes to pretend he is, he’s no danger to us directly. All we have to worry about is the dragon, and hopefully that’s gone for the night.”

            “What if this is a distraction so it can strike again?” Sola countered.

            Pete frowned, then pulled out his phone. He texted rapidly, then shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Problem solved. I’ve got Vicky suited up and on watch, and Gabe’ll get us if anything starts going wrong.”

            “We can’t just!” Sola glanced around the room before urging herself forward. “I don’t want to get possessed again.”

            “I know,” Pete said. “But we’re not gonna let that happen. Specifically, Ryan’s not gonna let that happen.”

            “I’m not?” Ryan asked. Pete pointed across the table at Ryan, eyes level and hard.

            “Your necklace,” Pete said. “I need to borrow it.”

            Ryan went still, took a deep breath, and sighed. “What necklace?”

            “Don’t be coy,” Pete flashed his teeth in what was not quite a smile. He held his palm open across the table. “I can see your aura. This is urgent.”

            Ryan scowled at Pete, motionless for a moment before pulling a necklace out of the pocket of his jeans. Patrick saw a flash of silver on a long black cord but didn’t get a chance to look at it before Pete thrust it into Sola’s hands.

            “Wear that,” he ordered. “He won’t be able to touch you.”

            “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why I need it?” Ryan asked, but he already looked bored and careless, slumped back in his seat with his arms crossed.

            “If Lucifer himself is out there with a blood vendetta against you specifically, by all means, take it back, but otherwise, she needs it more right now,” Pete said. He paused, then grudgingly added, “I am curious, but maybe later.”

            Sola clasped the necklace around her neck, and Patrick glanced at it while she did. The charm on the cord was circular with a star inside it, but it didn’t look like a pentagram. (Pentacle? He was never quite clear on the differences.) All the space between the edges of the star and the outer circle were filled with words, but none that he could make out at a distance.

            Pete, who had been rummaging while Patrick stared, slammed a purple ConAir hand mirror onto the middle of the table. The mirror was streaked with trace amounts of glitter and skin colored powder. Though the fluorescent lights were still buzzing overhead, the bus suddenly felt very dark.

            Patrick waited and waited for someone to make a joke and lighten the mood, but no one did. He made to open his mouth and say something, anything, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Pete centered the mirror on the table so it was roughly in the middle of all of them, and then cleared his throat.

            “Azazel, fuckface, we have need of you.”

            Patrick snorted, and repositioned himself closer to Pete again. It wasn’t making it weird. It was not making things weird. Sitting so close to Pete that he could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed was only weird if Patrick _kept thinking about how weird it was_.

            The mirror flashed gold, a burst of light that colored the whole bus for a moment. The light was too bright to see anything. Patrick waited for the light to fade quickly, like a camera flash, but the shining gold light hung in the air for far too long. Patrick could feel it or something within it looking. Probing. It did fade, slowly, replaced by a gentler yellow glow from a pair of golden eyes staring out at them from the mirror. They blinked a few times as they looked around, and Patrick was stunned by how much they looked like a yellow version of Pete’s eyes.

            “Quite rude of you to deny me physical space so forcefully,” the silken voice echoed around the bus.

            “Yet somehow it doesn’t seem as rude as possessing frightened teenagers to me. So I don’t feel especially bad for you,” Pete said. He leaned in closer. “We’ve noticed your dragon.”

            “Ah,” he sounded a little pleased. “What did you think of him?”

            “He’s very large,” Pete said.

            “Do you like him?”

            Pete growled. “Why don’t you just call me when you want my attentions?”

            “Why do you always assume everything is about you?” Azazel replied.

            “What do you want?” Pete asked. The bus was oppressively quiet for a moment.

            “I want to give you a fighting change.”

            There was another pause.

            “A fighting chance?” Pete asked.

            The eyes in the mirror were glancing around the table at each of them in turn, and Patrick squirmed when he felt the heat of its eyes on him. It felt warm and prickly, and Patrick could not help but feel that these eyes were seeing more than they should.

            “Do you know why you exist, Pete?”

“Well, when a mommy and daddy don’t love each other very much-“

             “I’m bored.”

             The words felt strangely sharp. Innocuous as they were on their own, they carried a great deal of weight. Patrick cleared his throat.

             “Have you considered taking up knitting? I hear that’s a great way to pass time.”

             Pete glared at Patrick, his eyes flashing. Patrick thought for a moment that he might have caused real damage, but to his surprise, the bus filled with the sound of laughter.

             “Oh, I like you, Patrick. You make everything so much more entertaining.”

             “They provide the magic and the muscle, I’m just here for the witty retorts,” Patrick said.

             “Will you shut up?” Joe asked quietly.

             “You’re bored?” Pete asked once silence had settled over the bus again.

             “Very. Eternity is rather a long time, you might have noticed. Having to spend that time chained to a rock makes it drag on longer. So I’ve been very bored. But you, Pete, you make my life so much more interesting. It’s a story to watch, a life to see play out in all its strangeness. I suppose you could call me a bit of a voyeur, but Ryan, you can sympathize, can’t you?”

             Ryan’s hand flew to his throat, and he glanced over at his necklace around Sola’s neck, a sour expression on his face.

             “Watching is so much better than participating, isn’t it?” he asked. Ryan straightened his shoulders, but said nothing in response.

            “Not much of a talker, is he?” Even though there was no visible person, Patrick felt sure he was now speaking to Pete again. “Such interesting company you keep. This is exactly my point. I’m giving you an edge because I would hate to see them die too easily. And all of them would hate to see your fans die.”

            “You could always just call the dragon off,” Pete said. The dry, throaty laughter filled the bus again.

            “Now, son, where would be the fun in that?”

***

 

            Andy couldn’t read auras, nor did he ever want to. His own emotions were enough for him, and he didn’t want to be privy to the emotional atmosphere of the whole world. Even so, he wasn’t blind. (He suspected blind wasn’t the correct term, but he didn’t know how else to convey the fact that he was aware of the obvious emotional undercurrent affecting his band.)

            The whole tour was hanging on the edge of a knife. This was worse than waiting for the Killers to attack, mostly because it wasn’t them in danger. Andy felt no fear for his bandmates, all of whom were quite capable of handling themselves. But letting innocent fans get hurt was the exact opposite of what he was trying to do.

            He’d been so hung up on the greater good as of late. He wondered if he would give up Sola in exchange for all the other fans in the arena and was deeply glad that he would never have to make that choice.

            So things were tense, and adding to the complication, there was Patrick.

            Andy didn’t like getting involved in other people’s drama. He didn’t like people being dramatic. A lot of emotional outbursts in other people were things he chalked up to melodrama. But he couldn’t ignore whatever the hell was going on between Pete and Patrick.

            Being in bands with pre-established gay members was easier, he thought. Every band he was in during high school set up a firm “no dating other band members” policy at the group’s inception. Andy still didn’t think people in bands should date each other. It was too messy and too complicated. Then again, it was none of his business. So he would have been content to ignore it, except for the fact that Patrick was acting excessively edgy about Pete, and it was kind of bringing Andy down.

            “Do you think I should bring granola?” Andy asked. “I mean, how long does dragon-tracking take? We probably can’t be gone that long. But I’ll still bring water. You should too-- the last thing we need is for you to get dehydrated before we even soundcheck.”

            Being a parent had instilled a lot of good traits in Andy, such as always being prepared and being able to wake up at six AM. It also made his bandmates’ flaws in these areas kind of glaring. But the sun was well risen the next morning, and Andy figured it was completely reasonable to expect the others to get up and be chipper if he could do it. Patrick, bleary eyed and swaying as he stood in the kitchenette, clearly disagreed.

            “Rick.” Andy snapped his fingers once in front of Patrick’s face, and Patrick blinked.

            “Huh?” he scrunched up his eyes and waved Andy away. “Fuck you. I’m awake. Sort of.”

            “We get off stage at, like, 10:30 at the latest,” Andy said. “And adult humans only need six hours of sleep a night.”

            “I went to bed two hours ago,” Patrick said. “What kind of granola?”

            “The granola kind. I don’t buy chocolate marshmallow shit at Walmart,” Andy said. Patrick wrinkled up his nose.

            “Only bring what you’ll eat,” he advised. He stuffed a few packets of Pop-Tarts into his own bag, and Andy rolled his eyes. He paused again and sighed, eyes half-closed, and for a moment Andy worried he was falling asleep standing up. Then, instead, he growled.

            “Can’t fucking stand him,” he muttered, his fists pressed taut to the counter.

            “I guess we’re not talking about Pete’s dad?” Andy asked wearily.

            “Pete,” Patrick said. “He’s going to fight the stupid dragon and I-- I mean, I could do it! I’ve killed vampires and he still thinks I’m weak?”  
            Rather than saying _you’re still on about this?_ Andy decided he ought to try and be tactful.

            “Well, maybe he thinks you’re weak. Or, maybe, just maybe, he heard his demon dad say that he wouldn’t be killed, like we all did. And maybe he figured he could do the dangerous work because he was the only one not in danger of dying a horrible, fiery death, since his safety was guaranteed. He might just not want to risk anyone else’s life.” Andy paused. He shouldn’t push things in either direction, but it was true, so: “Especially yours.”

            Patrick was quiet for a moment, then sighed, frustrated.

            “I could still have been the second! What makes Vicky more qualified than me? She’s a fucking skyscraper. Will she even fit in a dragon mouth?”

            “Patrick, have you noticed that you’re just a teensy bit, um, what’s the word…”

            “Talented?”

            “Obstinate.”

            Patrick glared up at Andy.

            “Look, it’s not personal,” Andy said. “Or, if it is, it’s for good reason. Pete will be fine, we’ll kill a dragon, and everyone lives to see another day, okay? Can’t you be happy we have a plan for once in our fucking lives?”

            “Ask again later,” Patrick said. “I’ll see if I change my mind.”

            “Whatever,” Andy said. “So no to the granola?”

            “Hard no to the granola.”

            Panic had graciously provided the group of them with a large black SUV with tinted windows, the only caveat being that they could come along. Their band seemed to have little issue with waking before ten in the morning, Andy noticed with a little longing before coming to his senses. He didn’t want to be in a band like Panic at the Disco. Brendon offered to drive, and in a great show of faith, Andy and the rest of his band let him.

            The group of them (ten counting Sola and Atalia) had discussed their options the previous night after the brief summoning. The dragon, they had noticed, seemed to prefer wooded areas. This made perfect sense to Andy, as a dragon could hardly curl up in a parking lot to sleep, but it was a little confusing. Sure, some of the amphitheater venues they were playing were in the middle of nowhere, but the vast majority of them were located in or near a major city, which made the dragon fairly inconvenient.

            Ryan had argued that the dragon presumably spent daylight hours in the nearest large outdoor area and flew to them at night, which was reasonable, but they had to prove that theory. They were playing in Salt Lake City that night, so this meant a half hour’s drive to the nearest forested area, which was also mountainous. So they made plans to drive there and then… There wasn’t really a second step. Kill the dragon? Talk it down? See if they could find it again at the next stop? Andy wasn’t sure. He doubted anyone was, but it felt good to have a goal in the meantime.

            They snuck out past security by putting the members of Panic in the front seats, which left the other band looking smug.

            “We don’t even have security because we’re technically off at the moment,” Ryan said smugly. “It’s so weird hanging out without leashes.”

            “You like Zack,” Spencer said.

            “Beside the point,” Ryan argued.

            Slipping out in full sunlight had never been easier, and Andy got a chance to see girls (and some guys) already lining up in front of the venue, in the full summer heat.

            “The doors don’t open for another ten hours,” Pete said.

            “We saw tents at the end of our last tour,” Spencer said.

            “Jesus.”

            The car ride was mostly silent, probably because everyone was still tired, but it passed very quickly, whether due to how tired Andy actually was or because it was only about a twenty-minute drive. Either way, it seemed like no time had passed when Brendon pulled off onto the shoulder and cleared his throat.

            “So what now?”

            “What do you mean, ‘What now?’?” Pete asked. “We need to get to the nearest wooded area and-”

            “Yeah, this is it,” Brendon said, glancing around. “It’s not, like, an official state park, but this section of the mountains takes up, like, a good fourth of the state of Utah.”

            “Oh,” Pete deflated. He was wearing sunglasses, which made him look exceptionally douchey, but Andy didn’t say anything about it. “Um. I guess we get out and look?”

            “Get out and look?” Jon asked.

            “What’s wrong with that plan?” Joe asked back.

            “Well it’s just…” Spencer made a face. “You heard Brendon. This forest is huge. You can’t, like, explore the whole thing in just a couple hours.”

            “Did you have a plan?” Joe asked.

            “No, but we thought you did,” Jon muttered.

            “We’re magnets for bad luck,” Patrick said. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the car, blinking in the sunlight and beckoning for the rest of them to follow him. “C’mon, I’m sure the dragon will come to us if we blunder around long enough.”

            Brendon hadn’t stopped them near a trail or anything convenient, just far enough down the highway between the mountains that there was no sign of civilization outside of the road itself as far as Andy could see. It was remote, and much more lush than Andy had ever expected from Utah. He was trying to adjust his expectations of the world the more he travelled, but it never stopped surprising him. Joe took the lead walking up away from the road on what he claimed was a trail. Andy suspected that if it was anything, it was maybe a deer trail. Even so, it was physically possible for humans to walk along it, which was all they technically required.

            They hiked in a silence similar to what they had driven in for a few minutes before Ryan cleared his throat.

            “You know,” he said. “I don’t mean to insult your methods,”

            “In that case, we’re good,” Joe said.

            “I don’t mean to insult your methods,” Ryan repeated, “But have any of you considered that I could speed up this process considerably?”

            Andy actually stopped walking. He was overwhelmed with a deep sense of feeling like one of world’s four biggest idiots. Brendon giggled behind him.

            “Could you?” Joe asked.

            “Find me a place to pass out that isn’t somebody’s arms,” Ryan demanded. They walked a bit further forward, just to where the ground leveled off slightly, and Ryan sat on a felled log, smirking ever so slightly. Spencer sat immediately on his right side, and the rest of them stood around those two in a loose circle.

            “What should we-?”

            “Shut up,” Ryan said before Joe could finish the sentence. “Just stay quiet and let me focus.”

            Joe cast a long-suffering look at Andy, and Andy shrugged. Patrick looked the most comfortable, leaning up against a tree and pulling his hat a little further down. Like he was settling in. Brendon and Jon were doing the same, so Andy slid down into a cross-legged position on the forest floor. It was a shockingly dry forest, so the ground wasn’t all that unpleasant.

            Ryan closed his eyes and leaned his head back slightly. For a moment he merely looked peaceful, like he was drifting off. Then suddenly he bent backwards at the waist, only avoiding slamming into the ground because Spencer caught him as he fell. Spencer held Ryan still as he spasmed, laying him almost flat and perpendicular to the tree he sat on. Ryan held still for a moment, then his muscles began jerking slightly. A muscle would spasm in his leg or his wrist, but he otherwise lay flat, held up only by Spencer’s hand. Andy stared at Spencer, watching the kid as he held him stoically still. Spencer turned to him and smiled a little.

            “This got a lot easier recently,” he said in a low voice, barely above the sound of a breath. “Werewolf strength and all. Less cramps.”

            Andy nodded, and re-trained his eyes on Ryan as he laid there, twitching only occasionally. They all stood or sat for a few minutes in silence, watching Ryan and waiting, in Andy’s case, for something to go wrong. It seemed to last an eternity, but it was probably less than five minutes before Ryan gasped and sat up, breathing heavily like he’d just come out from underwater.

            “Ry?” Brendon asked, and Ryan closed his eyes again, not asleep, but focused, nodding, and calming down. Andy was impossibly eager, but he didn’t think he should interrupt.

            Sure enough, a few moments later, Ryan took in a shuddering breath and opened his eyes again.

            “It’s killed again,” he said softly. “A group of hunters--the regular kind, deer hunters-- out in the forest somewhere.”

            “Where are they? Can we still get there in time?” Andy asked. Ryan shook his head.

            “No,” he said. His face was flat of emotion, but Andy thought that may have been for his own sake, for his sanity. “It’s happening, like, now. There’s no way we can get there in time.”

            “Where is there?” Pete asked.

            “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “But I watched it fly down from one of the mountains. There were two mountains, about the same size. I’d recognize them if I saw them again.”

            “Is it in this forest?” Andy asked. Ryan shrugged, looking a little annoyed.

            “Look, I don’t know the details,” he said. “I saw the mountains, that’s all I got.”

            “We can try driving around till you see it?” Brendon suggested.

            “Great, this wasn’t a colossal waste of time,” Patrick said. Andy felt similarly, but kept his mouth shut as they started back down the trail. Pete, meanwhile, was texting, and due to this, kept tripping himself on roots.

            Halfway back to the car, Pete shouted as he fell again, colliding with Andy and knocking them both to the ground.

            “Could you take your phone out of your hands for ten seconds?” Andy asked, picking Pete off the ground even as he spoke. Pete, to his annoyance, was grinning.

            “I don’t think you want me to,” he said.

            “Oh, thanks Pete!” Ryan said brightly from nearly twenty feet down the trail. “That’s it!”

            “Am I having a stroke?” Joe asked.

            “No, he found it,” Ryan said, walking back up the trail. He grabbed Pete’s phone and surveyed it, then held it up. Andy saw a grainy picture of two mountains sent by KTC.

            “The internet is magic,” Pete said. “Twin Peaks are about thirty minutes south of here.”

            “Man, all of us together might actually accomplish something,” Jon said. Andy had to admit that he had a point. They felt a lot less like headless chickens when they all worked together.

            The drive from the relatively empty state highway back out into Salt Lake City and down to the two mountains took considerably longer with all the traffic, and it was mid-morning when they got out of the car and onto another dubious trail. Andy hoped idly that they weren’t just leaving the tour behind unprotected, but they couldn’t be, he thought. They weren’t too far, and they had left Cobra Starship. That wasn’t a huge comfort, but it was definitely better than nothing.

            “Okay, so now we wander around until we find a dragon?” Brendon asked once they were again out of sight of the road.

            “We’re not wandering,” Ryan said. “The dragon is nearby, it’s just a question of where.”

            “Very nearby,” Joe said, and Andy turned to him. “I don’t hear any smaller animals. Do you? No birds, no coyotes? It seems pretty suspect.”

            Andy hadn’t noticed, but once Joe said it he could tell. The forest was incredibly quiet, the loudest sounds being their breathing. He didn’t even hear twigs snapping. But he could smell the scorched earth as the wind changed. The scent of smoke and fire. A horrible thought struck him.

            “Pete?” Andy asked. “Did you wear that flame retardant suit of yours?”

            Pete made a face. “No, I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t bring any weapons either.”

            “Yeah, neither did I,” Andy said. He glanced around.

            “Aw, fuck,” Patrick said.

            From the darkness of the forest in front of them, there came an enormous roar, so loud that the ground beneath them vibrated. The path they had taken was technically uphill, but it had taken them between the two mountains, walled in on either side with the dragon in front of them.

            “Is this a panic and run sort of moment?” Brendon asked. “It feels like we should be running.”

            “No, not yet,” Joe said. “It can’t see us, and unless it just roars for fun, something else has its attention.”

            Andy tried to focus on strain of logic too, rather than remembering how very flammable he was and being paralyzed by fear. Joe crouched down until he was somewhat obscured with foliage and indicated that the others ought to follow his lead. Andy got on his knees in the dirt and peered up at the sky, making sure his view of the sky was unobstructed.

            Andy listened closely to hear anything, though mostly all he could hear was his bandmates breathing loudly and rustling in the bushes. They weren’t hidden, not exactly, but if something wasn’t looking for them it might not notice. He just had to assume that Joe was right and the dragon’s attention was already occupied. He had a horrible thought that it might be one of the hunters Ryan had told them about, that he had been wrong and the band could have saved them, but then he saw an enormous shape launch itself into the sky.

            The others might not have been able to see, and in fact it was even difficult for Andy to know what was happening, but he could just make out the black dot of a bird flying high up by the mountain peak. He saw it a moment before a trail of fire hit it and it collapsed, spinning wildly as it fell to the earth. The dragon glided lazily over the peak of the mountain, uninterested in eating it. It seemed miraculous it could even see the bird, given just how gargantuan the dragon was. Now sitting visibly against the mountain, it could have been a large crest of white-gray boulders, easily seen by the naked eye as a huge formation of an already large mountain.

            He felt ill.

            “I always sort of pictured dragons as red,” Jon said, his voice low but not quite a whisper. It wasn’t funny, exactly, but it lightened the mood enough for Andy to breathe properly again.

            “Should we go?” Pete asked, deferring to Joe. Joe stood up slightly, not fully out in the open but not hidden either, half-crouched in the bushes and indecisive. He glanced at Andy like he knew exactly what he was thinking. Maybe he did.

            “We should go find the hunters,” he said softly.

            “Walking… closer to the dragon?” Ryan asked. “Look, I-- you know they’re dead, right?”

            “We should at least check,” Joe said. Ryan huffed, still keeping his voice low so as not to attract attention, but irritated.

            “I know what I saw,” he insisted. “They _are_ dead.”

            “You don’t have to come with,” Joe said. His voice was hard and unwavering. Powerful. Ryan glowered, but he stood up as well, much more of a production with his height than it was for any of the rest of them.

            They still walked cautiously and quietly, but Andy doubted it would make much of a difference. The dragon seemed to have incredible eyesight (which went against much of the mythos Andy knew about dragons) and in any case, it could probably smell them. Still. He was trying to remain cautiously optimistic. He glanced up at the dragon from time to time. It was hard to see it in the too bright desert sun, but it looked still, and the lumpy, almost natural shape of it made him think it was curled up.

            “I guess we know why it hasn’t been seen yet,” Jon said to Andy, noticing his gaze. “I can barely convince myself it’s a dragon when it’s all still like that.”

            Andy nodded, paying little attention. The smell of singed forest was getting stronger, the sickening scent of burnt human beings along with it. He could feel it before he got there, the awful knowledge of what he was about to walk into. He was trying to steel himself, because he knew Ryan was right, but _still_.

            The sunlight started to grow hazy as they walked, filtered through smoke. It was thin at first, just enough to cast a glimmering veil over the forest, but the deeper they walked into the trees the thicker it got, changing from translucent to thick and gray and cloyingly metallic in smell. Those in their group that were more dependent on their lungs than Andy started trying to stifle coughs as they walked, until Ryan asked in a raspy voice: “Do you think we should send the singers back out?”

            “We’re not some idiots in a horror movie,” Pete said. “No splitting up.”

            It was a good idea, and in any case, they were close. The earth under Andy’s feet was scorched, the topsoil blackened and crisp. He smelled the iron of burnt blood, and though it was hard to see through all the smoke, he led them the rest of the way to the two people, or what remained of them.

            They weren’t as bad as the first person Andy found. The two of them were dead, properly finished off, but it still hurt to look at their remains. The blackened corpses were collapsed in unnatural positions, jaws still wide open and bones showing. Maybe it had been a waste of time.

            Distantly, Andy heard the members of Panic cursing, finally starting to sound properly afraid. He glanced around the clearing, not really looking for anything in particular, when he noticed just front of the pair was a smaller shape, one that he didn’t think was a tree or a bush. Andy stepped closer to it and touched it, gently, some of the ash brushing away with his hand to reveal a skull. A canine skull.

            He wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t as though he thought the dog mattered more than the people. He told himself daily that all animals mattered equally, and as much as he meant it, he obviously was more opposed to people getting gunned down than watching record execs eat steak in front of him. But it just felt so needlessly cruel to him, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He stared at the dead dog for a long time, his chest aching.

            Andy was a murderer. He didn’t think about it often, or tried not to, but that was the only way he could see himself. He had killed. Maybe in self-defense, maybe in the defense of his friends, but all he could ever see looking back on his life was all the other options that he could have taken if he’d thought harder. He didn’t want to kill anything, but this dragon. If there was ever an exception to the rule, he felt it was this.

            “We probably should get out of here,” Joe said at last. “I doubt we’ll be able to recover any ID from them. Besides, we need to tweak the plan. The rest of our dates are mountain terrain, and that’ll make it harder to attack from…”

            Andy hadn’t moved, but when Joe trailed off he looked up. No one else was in the thick of the area like he was. He stood up, brushed the ashes off his clothes, and slid his backpack off his shoulders, rummaging inside it.

            “Care to share with the class?” Joe asked. It sounded mean, but Andy prided himself on hearing the subtle undertones of concern coming from him.

            “The smoke is diffusing through the trees,” Andy said. “We should’ve seen it from the other side of the mountains, but we didn’t.” He held up the slim orange tube of the flare and waved it once. “This’ll go for a while, and hopefully someone will find them and not the dragon. Ryan?”

            “Ah, okay,” Ryan said, and he closed his eyes, slumping briefly against one of the black trees. He nodded before he even stood up all the way again. “They’ll get found, and the rescue party should be fine. You won’t even start a forest fire.”

            “Awesome,” Andy said, striking the flare and setting it on the already burnt ground. The unnatural orange glow flickered against the mountain, and though it didn’t seem especially bright in the morning light, he trusted Ryan.

            “C’mon,” Joe said. “Sound to be checked, brownies to be eaten.”

***  

          Patrick felt antsy. Prepping for a battle wasn’t the sort of thing he expected to get used to, but even if he had, he would never have imagined that it felt a lot like cramming for a test. The nervous stomach that demanded he eat everything or nothing, the sweaty palms, the prickles of heat on the back of his neck-- the stress of the dragon was remarkably similar to his junior year math final.

            Patrick had never really studied for tests, though. He couldn’t focus on material he had already learned and he never saw the point in studying when he was guaranteed a bad grade anyway. Dragons demanded a lot more attention.

            The problem then was that, although he had to pay attention to the dragon, although it was a real and present danger, he couldn’t do anything. He sat through the afternoon wandering between people. Some time he spent with Sola, Atalia, and Ryan, who were holed up around their laptops, sending each other PDFs of ancient texts and trying to look for some loophole in the demon contract. For a briefer amount of time, he sat on the grassy knoll out behind the parking lot and watched Vicky and Pete practice stabbing upwards with heavy swords, a bitter taste in his mouth all the while. Joe enlisted the rest of Panic to take turns holding up thick sandbags for them to stab at, so they could get used to the sensation, but Patrick didn’t offer to help. He thought that simply sitting there and not breaking Pete’s nose was as close to an apology as he could offer at that moment.

            Then, some of the time, he did normal things. He worked on music. He shuffled through some of Pete’s lyrics, through hastily scribbled poems about love and friendship that didn’t mean anything, that he couldn’t let mean anything.

            He let himself get swept away in the current of his thoughts.

            He wanted to talk through the situation with a friend, with a best friend, but unfortunately, that option wasn’t there. Talking about this with his other bandmates was a humiliating prospect, as was calling his brother. Chicago would have helped with his naivety, his wisdom, but even if he could talk to Chicago, would he talk to an ex about falling in love?

            No, Patrick already had a best friend. And, terrible of an idea as it was, he had to talk to someone.

            Patrick caught up with Pete as he was headed back to the bus, still in the nearly skintight fireproof suit. His hair was mussed, but he wasn’t sweaty. He was never sweaty. He caught sight of Patrick before they were close enough to hear each other and gave him an extremely hesitant smile. Which was as close as Pete was going to get to an apology, Patrick supposed.

            “Rick,” Pete slung his arm around Patrick’s shoulder, body heat emanating off him. “You missed it. I am a dragon slaying god. Beowolf? Hasn’t got shit on me.”

            “I’m sure you’re an epic hero,” Patrick said dully. “But I don’t remember Beowolf smelling like roadkill.”

            Pete swatted at him, but gently.

            “So what all does dragon slaying entail?” Patrick asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his mouth and his voice.

            “Well, the plan was to get very close to the head and stab through the roof of the mouth, but seeing how big it is, the new plan is to try and get in and out of the mouth as quickly as possible to get the job done,” Pete said. Patrick felt ill thinking about it, but nodded. Then, he frowned.

            “How are you getting into its mouth?” he asked.

            “What do you mean?”

            “Well, like you said, the thing is enormous,” Patrick said. “How will you get high enough to get in and out of the mouth?”

            Pete looked thunderstruck.

            “You honestly didn’t think of this?” Patrick asked.

            “Um,” Pete said. “It sort of… it sort of bends down a lot, doesn’t it? Like, to breathe fire on us?”

            “What about when it straightens back up?” Patrick asked.

            Pete looked so crestfallen that Patrick pulled him into a sloppy hug, his arms thrown around his neck as he tried to make it better, somehow.

            “Hey, it’s alright,” he said. “Um, we’ll figure it out.”

            Pete didn’t look particularly soothed, and Patrick was low on ideas.

            “C’mon,” he said, taking Pete’s hand. He wasn’t usually in the business of taking Pete’s hand, but in the past it had soothed him, and it felt right then. “Let’s go.”

            “Go where?” Pete asked.

            “Let’s just go!” Patrick said. “We woke up so goddamn early we actually have a day to do things so let’s go fucking do things.”

            “Like what?” Pete asked. He asked it like a challenge, like Patrick wasn’t up to spontaneity, and Patrick loved challenges.

            “Like pizza, or bowling, or something equally pointless that management can yell at us for,” Patrick said. “You need to de-stress before we get back to thinking dragon thoughts.”

            “It wasn’t that easy for Harry Potter and I doubt it’ll be that easy for me,” Pete said. Patrick rolled his eyes.

            “Yeah, sure, whatever. You’re so emo you bleed eyeliner and The Cure lyrics. Do you want to get out of here?”

            Pete did.

            Patrick wanted to talk to him. Pete clearly wanted to talk to him about more serious things, but Patrick wasn’t going to let him. Fearing for the lives of ten thousand fans was obviously more noble than worrying about his personal love life, but they were both frustrating problems. It would do them both good to get away from their issues. To just be next to each other and be normal.

            So Patrick drove. Not all the way out to the mountains again, but up to the lake, the Great Salt Lake that he had heard so much about but had never actually seen before. Personally, he had a grudge against the “great” going in the front of its name when it was nothing compared to the actual Great Lakes, and he was sort of delighted at how hard Pete laughed when he admitted to that.

            They didn’t actually go anywhere. They didn’t want Pete to get recognized and there wasn’t actually all that much time, but they drove, and just being with Pete made Patrick feel like he could breathe properly.

            He was an idiot, and falling in love was going to kill him one day, but there wasn’t much to be done about the whole thing.

            “I feel like I must be missing something,” Pete admitted while they were driving. Patrick was a little lost, but he wasn’t going to worry about it yet. “I just. I don’t know. It all feels so random. Him just showing up.”

            Assuming they weren’t discussing Panic, Patrick nodded.

            “Had you… had you met him before?” he asked.

            Pete sighed.

            “Yes and no,” he said. “I mean. I always knew about him. It’s not like those movies where the kid finds out they’ve been adopted and their parents lied the whole time, you know?”

            “Yeah,” Patrick said. “But like, were you in preschool and telling your teacher you had a mommy and two daddies?”

            Pete wrinkled up his nose. “No. I’ve got two parents, just a little metaphysical side bullshit. But I knew he was involved. He visited when I was a kid.”

            “How?”

            “Possession. He’s- do you know the story of- eurgh, not saying names is so annoying. Do you know the story of him?”

            “No,” Patrick said. “Not much of a Sunday school kid.”

            “Technically this isn’t a Sunday school story,” Pete said. “Also, you’d have to be Catholic, I guess. King James cut out half the good shit when he reassembled the Bible, but anyway. Have you ever heard of the Grigori?”

            “The monks who sing in creepy Latin?” Patrick asked.

            “Nah, a breed of angels.”

            Patrick felt a shiver run down his spine. Angels shouldn’t be creepy, but the name “Grigori” didn’t sound especially angelic. Something about the approaching sunset and the severe voice made him feel… unsettled.

            “There are different types?” he asked.

            “A few,” Pete said. “You know, like, angels and archangels, those are the ones everyone knows about. There’s like, seven tiers of angels, dude.”

            “Jesus,” Patrick said, and then paused. “Wait, maybe literally. Does this mean, like, god is real? Like, that god? Capital-G father-son-and-holy-ghost god?”

            “How the fuck should I know?” Pete laughed. Like it was funny that Patrick was freaking out.

            “I’m so serious dude, if this is in the Bible-”

            “Real places in the Middle East are in the Bible. There are historical events in there, I just consider the angel stories to be part of that. Do you wanna hear this?”

            “Yeah, sorry,” Patrick said. He turned right, probably getting himself thoroughly lost. “Seven tiers of angels?”

            “Yeah, the whole Bible comes in sevens- it still doesn’t mean anything, dude, seven is just a magic number, okay? So the Grigori were a type of angel.”

            “Were?”

            “Were,” Pete confirmed. He paused. “They were also called watchers. According to the story- and I don’t know how much of this is real so no existential crises, okay? Capital-G god sent them down to Earth to live amongst humans and observe them by blending in with them. They were kind of scientists, in a weird way. They were supposed to study the humans and report back what they were like, which doesn’t really work with the whole omniscient view of God, but whatever I guess.

            “So they lived with humans for years, but then, you know, they got too used to each other. The Grigori started teaching them heavenly knowledge, like philosophy and math and makeup and shit like that.”

            “Makeup, the downfall of humanity,” Patrick said, and Pete shrugged.

            “One of my demon dad’s specialties, but if you tell anyone that we can’t be friends anymore.”

            Patrick laughed, and Pete even smiled too, before he continued.

            “So they started teaching all this stuff to humans, and then they started to fall in love with them.”

            “I get a feeling God wasn’t cool with that?” Patrick said.

            “You would be correct,” Pete said. “Some of them had reproduced with humans, some taught them forbidden information, some did nothing at all, but it was determined that the Grigori had become too close to humans, and they were cast out of heaven and doomed to live on Earth forever, never getting to die as humans did. And their leader was chained to a rock in a very remote location, to suffer alone in the baking sun day in and day out forever.”

            Pete cleared his throat.

            “That would be, erm-”

            “Since we can’t say his name, what if we call him Voldemort?” Patrick suggested. Pete let out a deep, chesty laugh.

            “Okay, that was Voldemort. The man in charge, and my creator.”

            “Fuck, dude. It sounds kinda like Prometheus,” Patrick said.

            “Yeah, I think it’s the same story, but I don’t know for sure,” Pete shrugged. “So, the Grigori were cast out of heaven, so the story goes, but only the worst offenders were seen as worthy of becoming demons. Fallen angels aren’t quite the same.”

            He paused for a very long time then, and Patrick almost leaned over to ask something else, when he inhaled, eyes closed, like he was trying to say something difficult.

            “So that’s how my mom met him the first time.”

            Patrick looked over at Pete but didn’t outwardly react. Pete waited a moment, then continued.

            “They were both Grigori,” he clarified.

            “I figured, you know,” Patrick said. He was not going to freak out, but he was definitely confused. “So how long ago did this happen?”

            “Upwards of forty thousand years, I guess,” Pete said. “I mean, she’s never said exactly, and time wasn’t always measured perfectly. She doesn’t like talking about it. But that was how they knew each other so that they could make the deal and all. She made me and she got to be mortal.”

            “But,” Patrick was concentrating very intently, not even sure he was keeping track of everything that was going on in the story. “But if they’re the same species and fae are made from an angel and a demon-?”

            “Like I said,” Pete shrugged. “Some of them were considered demons, some were just fallen angels. It’s not actually the same thing.”

            “Cool, that makes no fucking sense,” Patrick said. Pete shrugged again.

            “I didn’t make the rules, dude.”

            “I’m starting to think there aren’t actually rules,” Patrick said.

            “Maybe not,” Pete agreed. “I don’t know. He’s a demon, I know, but the story doesn’t sound so evil. Just the whole cornering my mom into having me part. I’m just used to hearing that he’s evil. And then, you know, this now. But he doesn’t want to take over the world or anything. He’s just looking for entertainment with me. That’s why I was born in the first place. And I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. At least I know I’m wanted by someone.”

            They were outside of city limits now, though Patrick really didn’t know where exactly. He pulled onto the shoulder of the road so he could properly turn to Pete.

            “Look, I’ll be the first to say an all-forgiving capital-g God should’ve given the devil a second chance, but I think the whole murdering-ten-thousand-teenagers-for-fun thing is pretty evil. And you are wanted by a shit ton of people better than him.”

            “Fans don’t count,” Pete said. “I mean, I love them, but I doubt they’d keep loving me if they really met me.”

            “I was referring to your friends, you massive shit-head,” Patrick said in a level voice. “Personally I think myself slightly better company than a demon. Even a weirdly friendly, chaotic-neutral demon of makeup.”

            Pete grinned, and Patrick felt a flood of happiness seeing Pete happy. He could slay a dragon on his own for that smile. But Pete sobered up, because they weren’t done.

            “This feels like my fault,” he said. Patrick shrugged. Not lying didn’t give him many options.

            “I mean, maybe,” he said, and Pete stared at him. A few lone cars whizzed by the two of them, but the road was mostly empty, and it felt absurdly intimate. “Look, you didn’t sick a dragon on the world, but maybe it is a little your fault in the way it kinda is the kid’s fault when their parents get divorced. No ill-intent, but part of the cause.”

            “You should work on your pillow-talk,” Pete said.

            “What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Patrick said. “If you hadn’t been born maybe He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would dump a monster on the world with no chance of getting rid of it. There’s no way of knowing and no point in agonizing over it.”

            “Alright, you’re getting better.”

            “Dick. The point is you’re a beloved hero living a charmed life and I care about you, okay?”

            Pete’s eyes were too intense, too deep and dark in a way that had nothing to do with eyeliner. He leaned a little closer over the gearshift, too close. Now, Patrick realized, now would be a good moment to speak. Kiss. Act. But he was frozen under Pete’s gaze, and did not think he would be moving anytime soon.

            “You shouldn’t,” Pete said. “I’m dangerous.”

            “Yeah, so’s driving and alcohol and being in a band and living,” Patrick said. “Don’t be melodramatic. We’re working on slaying a dragon. I think we’re a little past this.”

            Pete snorted, but jerked his head in concession. “Fine, I’ll drop it. You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever told all this to?”

            “Funny, and I thought you would’ve told Jeanae’s parents. That would’ve really warmed her dad to you, right?”

            “Jesus, I do not miss him. You think there are really people who get along with their girlfriend’s parents?”

            “No idea,” Patrick said. Then he giggled. “An angel named Dale. I kinda like it.”

            “I think that names might have changed over forty-thousand years.”

            “Yeah, but let’s think about the heavenly angel _Dale_. Lucifer, Gabriel, Dale.”

            “I would say to stop making jokes about my mom but this is so outside the realm of normal mom jokes.”

            “Hey, only the name. I love your mom. I’m her favorite son, you know.”

            Pete laughed again, looser than before, easier. “Yeah, I know.”

            Patrick started the car again and made a very illegal U-turn to head back in vaguely the direction of the venue. “I don’t suppose you know the way back?”

            “Oh my God, did you get us lost?”

            “Possibly,” Patrick admitted.

            Pete’s SideKick chirped and he glanced down, then pulled a face.

            “Well, we need to find the way back, like, twenty minutes ago,” he said. “They’ve got company back at the tour.”

***

            Pete wasn’t having a good week.

            Ryan had come out at his request (demand) in hopes of finding out more about the prophecy, and figuring out some way to fix something that hadn’t gone wrong yet. And, in the meantime, Pete was trying to do as much as was physically possible to keep Patrick safe.

            Patrick had not so much appreciated that.

            The problem was that Pete wasn’t an idiot. More than that, he had an extra superpower that let him see people’s emotions all the time. He saw the way Patrick’s aura glowed, curled unconsciously towards Pete’s. How it had been reaching out, warming, shining like the sun. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Patrick had figured out how he felt about Pete. It should’ve made Pete feel amazing, it should have been a wonderful moment, but instead all he could feel was dread. Like someone falling in love with him set the doomsday clock five minutes to midnight.

            He wanted opposites so badly. He needed Patrick to tell him, say out loud that he loved him, but he didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want him to seal his doom. So since he and Patrick couldn’t fix it, he hoped that maybe the Oracle himself could give him better news.

            Thus far, Ryan hadn’t been any damn help at all.

            “I’d say it’s a judgement call,” Ryan told Pete on the first night. “I mean, sure, ‘fae will lead to the fall of man’ could mean that you’ll kill him, but it could also mean you’ll accidentally trip him or something. But prophecies usually mean death.”

            “You know,” Pete had said through gritted teeth, “I’m not sure I like those odds.”

            Ryan hadn’t offered very much advice. Mostly, he shrugged, and said “so it goes,” because he had been rereading his Vonnegut collection. And then Patrick had been pissed at Pete, which bought him a little more time but had the side-effect of making Patrick mad at him. Having his only Patrick interactions be icy glares was too much for Pete to handle.

            Pete knew it was mostly his anxiety talking, but every day recently felt like he was just waiting for the world to end.

            It stood to reason, he decided, that after a brief interlude of happiness, a few moments free of the bullshit, stolen away with Patrick, something else would go wrong. When didn’t it?

            They weren’t actually that lost. The grid-like pattern of Salt Lake City was easy to traverse, and it didn’t take long to get back to the venue. Pete noted that it was probably time to soundcheck, but Gabe had said that there was an urgent issue that needed to be dealt with first.

            Pete jumped out of the car before it had actually stopped moving to see what was wrong. Everyone who had texted him (and everyone had texted him, marking it as urgent but not quite an emergency) didn’t actually say what was wrong, just that he needed to come back.

            Him specifically, which was abnormal, as was not mentioning the problem. Pete could only think of one reason for that. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Azazel.

            “Hey,” Ryan said. He looked mildly nervous and mildly stoned, though these two things were most likely unrelated. “So there’s a situation.”

            “I gathered,” Pete said. “What’s up?”

            “We believe that Sola is possessed,” Ryan said. “But I can’t confirm.”

            “Is she still wearing the necklace?” Pete asked.

            “Unless she took it off herself.”

            Patrick was out of the car and standing beside Pete, a matching look of concern on his face. Pete huffed and said, “Take us to her.”

            Sola was laid out on the couch in the main area of the bus, eyes wide and unseeing as she stared up at the ceiling. She wasn’t blinking or even moving, but rather holding herself unnaturally still. She was unrealistically stiff, like a piece of plywood on the couch.

            Pete looked at her for a long time, his eyes resting on the tetragrammaton resting on her collar. It was unharmed, but she still definitely wasn’t herself. Her aura was flat, just the dim white light surrounding her that assured him that she was alive.

            “How long has she been like this?” Pete asked.

            “Half hour. Maybe longer,” Ryan was surveying her as well, though from a distance. “She’s physically fine, but her pupils are pretty dilated. She just said your name and dropped.”

            “Guessing somebody wants to talk to me,” Pete sighed. “Okay. What do you think?”

            “Which one of us?” Patrick asked.

            “Either. Both.”

            “If you take off the necklace he’ll be able to come through, so. That’s a pro and a con,” Ryan said.

            “Can he hold her in stasis like that forever?” Patrick asked. “I mean, if he can get around the pentagram thing, why isn’t he all the way possessing her?”

            “She’s protected but he’s strong,” Ryan said. “He can’t fully inhabit her at the moment, but she’s definitely, ah, not alone in her body at the moment. The best that she can do is shut it down.”

            “Is she the one shutting it down?” a voice asked from behind Pete. He turned to see Atalia, skin pale and taut around her bones. Ryan made a face.

            “Maybe,” he said. “It’s difficult to say. That could just be the tetragrammaton. Impossible to know.”

            “Impossible, or difficult?” Atalia asked.

            “Extremely difficult,” Ryan said. “He could be feeling benevolent, which isn’t really something we want to miss.”

            “This is her body,” Atalia said.

            “Can you see if you can talk to him in a mirror?” Patrick asked Pete.

            Pete doubted it would work, but he nodded, terse. He grabbed the hand mirror, just sitting on the dining table now because he wanted to have it on hand and held it directly in front of himself.

            “Azazel?” he said. The mirror remained blank, but in it he saw Atalia twitch. He set the mirror down gently.

            “Any other ideas?”

            Pete was looking at all of them, but only really seeing Patrick. Patrick looked not at Pete but at Atalia, setting a hand on her shoulder.

            “Maybe the sooner we get this over with the sooner we can get her out of this,” he said. “We’ll figure out something else that can protect her, but if you think she wouldn’t want that we can, I don’t know, try to exorcise her or something.”

            Atalia looked up at Pete.

            “You think he’ll leave when he’s done?” she asked.

            “Yes,” Pete said. That much he felt certain of, if nothing else. “But I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

            Atalia’s face was pinched. Her aura was heavy with indecision, longing, and most of all, intense worry for her friend. She took a deep breath and nodded.

            “Go ahead,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

            Pete tugged the necklace around her neck so that the clasp lay in the front, then undid it and pulled it away from her. Once no part of it was touching her, she gasped, jerking upwards like a string had been pulling upwards from her sternum.

            Sola sat up straight for a moment, her face blank and her hands pressed down onto the couch. Then she launched herself at Patrick, pinning him to the ground and clawing at his face and eyes.

            It took Pete a second, too long of a second, to respond, and then he was on the ground with them, pulling Sola away from Patrick. He could hear Atalia shouting and remembered very distantly that he shouldn’t hurt her, but he didn’t hesitate to push her hands behind her back, holding her wrists together while she thrashed.

            “Should I speak Latin backwards?” her voice demanded in the cadence of someone else. “Should I fuck her with a crucifix? Tell me, Pete, if you want to treat me like a cinematic demon what if I start acting like one?”

            Patrick’s hands and forehead were bleeding, a gash on his forehead dripping into his eye, but Azazel hadn’t actually done much harm. Just shaken them, which Pete supposed was the point.

            “Be careful where you share your stories, Pete,” the demon said. “Be careful how you tread. I promised you your life but everything else is in limbo.”

            “I have had it up to fucking here with the theatrics,” Pete said evenly. “Say what you want to say and piss off.”

            “This girl is mine,” the demon hissed. “There’s nothing you can do about that, so ordering me away from her is as idiotic as it is dangerous for you. That’s my first point.”

            “And the second point?” Pete asked. Rather than responding, Sola went slack in his arms, boneless and breathing shallowly.

            “Was that fucking it?” Pete yelled. Not at a mirror or at Sola, but to the open air.

            “Well, it could’ve been worse,” Patrick reasoned. He had wiped some of the blood off his face with the back of his hand, and now looked almost cheerful. “No crab walking like in the Exorcist. You okay?”

            That he directed to Sola, sitting with her back against the couch.

            “Mostly,” she said, her voice thin and dry. She reached up towards Patrick’s face and grimaced. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

            “Not you,” Patrick said. “Don’t even worry about it.”

            “Fascinating,” Ryan said softly. “I mean, really, I’ve never seen a possession before. Why does an ancient demon have such a modern sense of humor?”

            “Lots of people watching,” Pete said darkly. “What else does he have to do with his day?”

            “I suggested knitting, but I guess that fell through,” Patrick said. Pete didn’t really think this was a laughing matter, and he kept his mouth firmly shut.

            It was over, just like that. Patrick started walking towards the venue to sound check, but Pete hung back, one hand on Ryan’s shoulder, forcing him to stay behind as well.

            “Can I help you with something?” Ryan asked.

            “Actually, yes, jackass, you can,” Pete said, tugging him into the back of the bus and out of earshot of Sola and Atalia.

            Ryan had grown up a lot. Sometimes Pete forgot this, when he saw Ryan in mixed company or out doing something fun, but when it was just the two of them his aura stopped blending in with everyone elses and revealed itself to be worn. Exhausted. The color that wrapped around him was thin and old, burdened with grief and knowledge. He hadn’t really watched Ryan grow up the way he had Joe or even Brendon to some degree, but it still hurt to see him looking so worn.

            “So you had the prophecy, but today,” Pete started. Jumping straight to the point would be good for both of them. “Today you could look into the future and look for the information you needed.”

            “I can state true facts too,” Ryan said. “Roses are red. What’s your point?”

            “Don’t be a dick,” Pete said. “Look into the future now. Find out what the prophecy means, if I’m going to kill Patrick or not!”

            “If it were that simple, don’t you think I’d have done it already?” Ryan asked. Pete began to deflate. But he kept staring, hoping for any kind of answers.

            “I can’t look far into the future for anyone,” Ryan said. “Prophecies are the only distant future thing I get. Mostly I come up with past and present. Besides, I can only look for a subject, a person or an object, not an event, because most events aren’t determined. Just the ones in prophecies, and again, I can’t see those ahead of time.”

            “Then what’s the fucking point?” Pete yelled.

            Ryan shrugged.

            “I had to warn you,” he said. “Or, I thought I did. Should I not have?”

            “No, I- of course you should have,” Pete said. “But why isn’t there more to it?”

            “Sometimes there just isn’t,” Ryan said. He pursed his lips and cocked his head, eyes shut briefly. “Also, you need to go do soundcheck now. I’ll be here when you guys finish, okay?”

            Pete went to soundcheck. His fingers fumbled out the notes and his backing vocals were barely perceptible on the audio system, but they quickly discovered that this was the fault of Pete and not the sound technicians. He kept his hood pulled over his head and his eyes on the floor and barely kept afloat through the afternoon. Patrick, oblivious, just kept shining, brighter than any spotlight they could aim at him.

            Back in the dressing room, he sat down next to Joe and said, “So.”

            “So?” Joe asked warily.

            “How do you think we should go about getting the dragon’s head down to where we can easily enter and exit the mouth?” Pete asked. Joe turned to look at him, confused, and then dismayed, and finally annoyed.

            “We never think this shit through, do we?” he asked.

            “No,” Pete said. “But we have to this time. You know anything about snake charming?”

            “How similar are dragons to snakes?”

            “I’m not sure, but I suggest we find out.”

            Pete wasn’t exactly full of research ideas, but he texted Dan anyway to see what (if anything) he could dig up on dragons that they didn’t already know. He asked Gabe if he thought he could speak to other reptiles, to which Gabe flipped him off. And he ordered Brendon off to go buy a red hoodie, just in case the dragon reacted like a bull for some reason. Then he wriggled his way into Patrick’s lap, prophecy be damned.

            “I see you’re working very hard on this dragon situation,” Patrick said, not turning from his phone.

            “I’m great at delegating tasks,” Pete said. “Not like you’re doing anything either.”

            “I had a job, which was then taken from me,” Patrick said. His tone was mostly light, but even Pete if hadn’t been able to see his aura, he would’ve seen straight through Patrick.

            “I’m sorry,” Pete said. “And I promise I’ll explain it to you someday, okay?”

            Patrick set the phone down.

            “Is it a good explanation?” he asked.

            “The best,” Pete promised. He nuzzled in closer. “It’ll make sense. I swear.”

            “Guess I have to believe you, then.”

            Pete felt like he owed him something else, but he couldn’t say anything that would help. He didn’t want to pull away yet either. He nestled his head down on Patrick’s thighs and took deep breaths, trying to think of some of his own solutions to the dragon. He supposed he probably couldn’t body block the whole world, but it might be worth trying if he was the only one whose safety was guaranteed.

            The evening bled by into night, and Pete felt like he sleepwalked back onto stage. He kept his head down, talking when the script told him to and barely smirking when it was necessary to get a scream out of the audience. He could’ve done it in his sleep, the shows were all so very much the same. But unlike the rest of his life, the fate of the world didn’t depend on how well he did on stage, just his presence in magazines. Arguably less important.

            He was dazing his way through the show when he looked up at Patrick. Caught in just the right light after a song, he was so breathtaking, so beyond Pete. Stunned, Pete went still. He’d had this moment dozens of times before, a copy of a copy of a trademark Pete Wentz moment, staring at Patrick and feeling so in love with him, but this time Patrick saw him.

            Their eyes locked. Their expressions were identical, like electricity filling the air. They were magnetic, full of longing and passion. They were mirrors for a moment, mirrors of a desperate, obsessive love.

            And then Patrick realized that Pete was making the same expression. Pete saw it on his face, in his aura, and he felt a thrill of fear run through him. No more putting this off.

            The second security dragged him out of the crowd after Saturday, Pete ran. He was not stopping for Patrick, not for anyone in his band, and he was of the opinion that if Ryan was not waiting on his bus, Panic would have to find another fucking label.

            Luckily, Ryan was on his bus, in his bunk actually, and he stood up when Pete ran in.

            “You okay?” Ryan asked. “I saw-”

            “What?!” Pete shouted. Ryan drew back, wasting precious seconds of Pete’s time. He needed answers, he was out of time.

            “Patrick’s coming to confront you,” Ryan said.

            “Yeah, I got that,” Pete growled. “And what happens then?”

            “Well, you haven’t decided how you’re going to respond yet, so I really can’t tell you-”

            “RYAN. Cut the fucking bullshit and tell me if I’m going to kill him or not,” Pete said. He had Ryan pinned against the bunks, looking scared, but Pete was a few degrees of anxiety beyond nice.

            “Prophecy or not, you’re dangerous,” Ryan said eventually. “I don’t know the details. He’s always going to be in more danger around you. But you’ve already changed the course of his life. I don’t know if it’s too late or not. I can’t tell you how to do this.”

            “But I am not going to kill him!” Pete said. Ryan was very still and very quiet.

            “I don’t know.” Ryan said. “But he is going to die.”

            The bus door slammed open, and Ryan pulled away. He grimaced and mouthed “good luck” at Pete.

            “Pete!” Patrick called.

            “Sorry, Patrick,” Ryan said. Pete couldn’t see past the curtain to the front of the bus, but he could imagine Ryan ducking past Patrick. “On my way out. He’s all yours.”

            Traitor.

            Pete paced. His thoughts were racing and maybe he could tell Patrick the whole truth? That they were bullshit-magical-Shakespearean star-crossed lovers? Maybe he could charmspeak him, make him forget the whole thing. Maybe he could fake a serious injury in the next two seconds. Before he had time to cling to a plan, much less execute one, Patrick ripped aside the curtain. Pink-skinned, still sweaty from the concert, eyes burning.

            “Rick, listen,” Pete said. He braced for something, a punch, an accusation. And then he was slammed into the wall, wrists pinned over his head, and Patrick’s mouth was on his mouth.

            Pete had kissed Patrick before. Granted, before he’d either been cursed, drunk, or half-dead, so those hadn’t really counted. But he had thought that he wouldn’t be so taken aback by the situation if it happened again. He thought, ludicrously, that he could be used to this.

            As if anyone ever could get used to this.

            Patrick dropped one of his wrists and let his hand fall, fingers pushing back Pete’s hoodie to curl in his hair. He stepped closer, chest to Pete’s chest and thighs to Pete’s thighs. His mouth was soft and hard as he pressed himself ever closer to Pete, closer than should have been possible. They were merging into one.

            “Can I?” he asked without ever taking his lips from Pete’s.

            Pete made a noise of assent in his throat. He was beyond words.

            Patrick pulled him through the doorway and they stumble-fell onto the bed, not breaking away once. Patrick loomed over Pete, taking up his whole field of vision, his whole field of emotion and thought. His knees were braced on either side of Pete’s hips, and he leaned so that their chests were touching again when he kissed him. He was feverishly hot and smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and _Patrick_.

            When Pete pulled at the hem of Patrick’s shirt Patrick ripped it off, no hesitation, and Pete lifted his arms over his head where he lay so Patrick could do the same to him. He felt like art, like music, like color, like simply the word _yes_.

            Pete knocked aside Patrick’s hat. He ran his hands over Patrick’s hair, almost smoothing it, just feeling it. Soft, downy, he only got a second to appreciate it before Patrick’s mouth was on his neck and his breath was against Pete’s ear and Pete was fairly certain he no longer spoke English.

            “Pete,” Patrick whispered, more a prayer than a name. But it was a name.

            It was as though bricks had crashed on Pete’s torso, how intense the weight of what he was doing was. He went still, cold, and then shoved Patrick onto the floor. His shirt, his shirt, he didn’t know where his shirt was, and he dragged a pillow up in front of his chest. He was shaking. Shivering, maybe, or trembling, he wasn’t sure. It felt like an important distinction, but his brain was tangled.

            Patrick stood up. The heat in his eyes burnt quickly into fury.

            “Hey, quick question,” he said. “ _What the fuck?!_ ”

            Pete couldn’t get any air to his lungs, so hopefully air wasn’t necessary to talk.

            “Um,” he said. “Um. I was gonna go talk to Mark tonight-”

            “Pete, what the fuck?!” Patrick shouted. “Are you going to pretend that didn’t just happen?”

            ‘Yes’ was probably the wrong answer, so Pete said nothing. He was looking at the blankets, dark blue and wrinkled. They felt strangely juvenile, like something he would have had in his room as a teenager, not on his bus as an adult.

            “Are you listening to me?”

            “I can’t,” Pete said. His ears were roaring.

            “Holy shit, okay, you like me,” Patrick said. “Love me, I think. Are, in point of fact, attracted to me. What the fuck gives?”

            “You know I love you,” Pete said. “I’ve always loved you.”

            “ _You are in love with me_ ,” Patrick said. Determined. Pete couldn’t look at him. He started picking at a stitch in the sheet, trying to rip the cover open. After a moment of silence, Patrick continued. “Fucking hell, I’m in love with you! I know it! I can’t fucking make it go away because you’re you! You’re my best friend and you’re perfect and I don’t know why the fuck you _would_ be in love with me but I know that you are!”

            He sounded angry, but Pete knew this anger, knew it from mermaids, from Chicago, from vampires. Patrick was close to tears. Pete was going to have to be cruel.

            “What makes you think that?” he asked. His voice was flat.

            “Would you like a list?” Patrick asked. “You dragged me onto the bed-”

            “Everyone gets a little worked up on tour.”

            “-you wouldn’t stop crawling all over me during the fanfiction curse-”

            “We were cursed.”

            “-motherfuck, I know you. I know you better than anyone and I know I’m right,” Patrick said. Pete looked up at him. He was trying not to cry. Pete shook his head.

            “What do you want from me?” he asked.

            “Tell me,” Patrick said.

            “Tell you?”

            “Are you in love with me or not?”

            Well, fuck. Pete was trapped, he was trapped and in love and Patrick still wasn’t wearing a shirt and Pete couldn’t look at him, when staring at him forever was all he wanted to do. Patrick deserved so much better.

            “Look, we’ve been on tour for a long time, and maybe there’s- I don’t know, unresolved pubescent sexual tension or something-”

            “Do not pull this fae shit on me, just answer the question, are you in love with me or not?”

            “-and you could just be confused, you’ve only ever said you were straight-”

            “-do you love me, yes or no?”

            “-I don’t want to have this conversation like this, I don’t want to do this right now-”

            “YES OR NO?”

            Pete’s brain caught it, just barely. He didn’t clarify the question first. The question wasn’t attached to anything, and it didn’t mean anything. His one way out.

            “NO!” Pete shouted.

            The bus was silent.

            “Right,” Patrick said. All the emotion had been sapped from his voice and he was businesslike, distant. “Okay. Fine. That was all you had to say.”

            He went to the corner of the room, knelt down and picked up his t-shirt. Pete was still reeling with aftershocks, but a distant part of him was screaming to fix it, fix it, fix it now because this was his last chance.

            Patrick, dressed again, jammed the hat back onto his head. He wouldn’t face Pete.

            “Next time get to the point a little faster,” Patrick said. Pete could hear his voice on the edge of cracking, could feel the pain like it was his own, and he realized distantly that it was.

            _Wait._

            “Wait!” Pete said, falling off the bed in his hurry to stand up. He put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, trying to turn him around. “Wait, Patrick, I’m-”

            “Please,” Patrick said. Pete still couldn’t see his face, but he heard more than he ever needed to in one word. “Please don’t say you’re sorry.”

            He walked out of the bus and didn’t look back.

***

            Patrick walked back to his bus and told himself that it could be worse. He could be stuck sharing a bus with Pete. He could be stuck in a van with Pete.

            He couldn’t tell himself that the whole tour wasn’t staring at him, because they were. But dammit, it could be worse, because at least none of them had stopped him to ask something humiliating like “What’s wrong?”

            It was bad because he was crying and even if it was hard to see in the dark and he wasn’t letting himself make any noise, his face was getting blotchy and there would be no way to hide it on the bus. But, it could be worse because he was keeping quiet and no one could hear that he was on the brink of sobbing.

            He was an idiot, but at least he hadn’t been an idiot in front of anyone else.

            It could be worse it could be worse it could be worse.

            “Hey, Patrick!”

            It could be worse.

            “Where’ve you been, man? You took off right after the show.”

            It could probably be worse.

            “Thought for a second that something bad had- whoa. Holy shit, dude, are you okay?”

            “FINE,” Patrick snarled, shoving Gabe out of his way so hard he nearly knocked him to the asphalt. He had raised his voice. People were staring. Why was the parking lot so well lit? Would it kill them to leave it dark so crimes could be committed in peace and so he wouldn’t look even more pathetic than he already did?

            Stopping would have been worse than anything else. He couldn’t stop, not to see if Gabe was okay, not to see who was definitely muttering about him. He finished crossing the parking lot and slammed the door of his own bus. He didn’t look twice at Sola and Atalia, didn’t even let himself think about Andy on the off-chance that thinking about him could summon him.

            He didn’t stop until he was in the back of the bus, hat pulled down over his eyes and shirt pulled up over his mouth and arms crossed in front of his face so he could fall apart in peace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading! I've been planning this chapter, specifically the end of this chapter, since basically the dawn of time, but if you're not into Peterick... sorry. That'll be big in the next chapter too. 
> 
> Thanks so much as always for sticking with me for so long, and sorry things have been weird with updates lately. Idk I'm v tired so I'm not that coherent but you guys mean the world to me, and thanks so much again!!!
> 
> Chapter Title by Fall Out Boy


	14. Thriller (Part Two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thrilling conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow, I know you guys are eager, so I'll get straight to the chapter and save the notes for the end. Enjoy!

            Patrick woke up to the sound of someone else walking on the bus. The bus was rocking due to the road, and it almost felt comfortable. Waking up was sort of nice too. For a moment he closed his eyes and pretended that the previous night hadn’t happened. If he could pretend none of it had happened, then things could go back to normal. He would pine for a while, sure, but he would get over it in time. Pete could go on being his best friend and he could go on being in a famous band. It wasn’t exactly happily ever after, but it was pretty damn close.

            And yet, Patrick wasn’t actually that good at lying to himself.

            He laid in bed, on his side but not curled up if only because curling up would have made him feel infinitely more pathetic. He slowly tried to take stock of the previous night, see where things had gone wrong.

            First, Patrick had seen Pete looking at him on stage. Pete had looked at him differently than usual that time, he had thought. There was something in his eyes, a longing, a craving that Patrick realized was trained on _him_. Or, he thought it had been trained on him, anyway.

            He had stormed onto Pete’s bus then, and embarrassed himself in the worst fucking way imaginable. The memory of pawing at Pete, panting hot against his mouth, trailing sloppy kisses up his neck-- it made Patrick want to vomit. To rip his skin off piece by piece. He’d been unbelievable, needy and embarrassing and... It was all just awful. It made him sick and pained to think about it, and as a form of self-torture, he kept running over the scene in his head. It was like sinful priests whipping themselves, he thought. If he kept picturing the look of disbelief (disgust) on Pete’s face, the frenzied way he shouted “NO,” the pity in his voice, the feel of his skin before he pushed Patrick off.... He made sure the pain never really stopped. He picked at the wound. He felt the hard floor under him, Pete shoving him. And when he started to feel numb to the humiliation and failure, he remembered kissing Pete, how amazing it had felt, and all the pain felt fresh again. He had never considered himself a glutton for pain, and yet this felt appropriate. He wanted to wallow.

            So, wallow he did. He had claimed the back room of his and Andy’s bus already, and though Andy had never disputed it, it had always been an option for either of them before. That night, however, Patrick kept the door shut, and when he heard Andy’s voice, he sat with his back to the door so that he couldn’t come in without damaging the bus. Outside the door he heard Andy asking if he wanted to talk, asking what happened, asking if Patrick would at least tell him if he was all right, but Patrick eventually yelled at him to fuck off. Andy took the hint. Patrick sure as shit wasn’t in the mood to cry to someone else in his band. Not now, not ever.

            Patrick did keep listening to what was going on outside the door. He listened that night as Andy called Joe to ask what was going on, as he waited for Joe to find out, and as he said “Oh,” in a very quiet voice. A pitying voice. Patrick couldn’t listen after that. He pushed as many amps and heavy boxes up against the door as he could, then put on headphones and got in bed. He didn’t fall asleep quickly or easily, but he blasted music and tortured himself with reliving and reliving the scene over and over again until he finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

            Then, in the morning, after pretending things could be fine for a brief moment, he went back to imagining the awful look on Pete’s face.

            Had he ruined the whole band, then? He must have. He didn’t know how Pete was going to tolerate being on stage with him anymore, and he definitely couldn’t imagine being in that close of contact with him, which posed an equally significant problem. How was he ever supposed to look at Pete again? Patrick looked at the clock on the bedside table and saw that it was already noon. He must have slept for a long time, because it wasn’t that late when he holed up in his room. Soundcheck wasn’t that far away, and what the hell would he do then? Why hadn’t he kept his damned mouth shut?

            Since Patrick could still hear people moving on the bus, he didn’t leave the room. He needed to eat, probably, and he really, really wanted a drink in a way that struck him as potentially unhealthy, but he didn’t want to see anyone. Couldn’t see anyone. They would either look disgusted, or more likely pitying, and he couldn’t take that. He couldn’t take anything. He was weak and soft and so fucking stupid for thinking that Pete could look at him with interest.

            It took him another hour of loud music and feeling sorry for himself before he checked his phone for messages. It turned out that people had been texting him all night and morning, but Patrick wasn’t especially interested in responding to any of them. He clicked through them, worried from Andy, confused from Joe, a mixture from the rest of the fucking tour. His stomach felt like it was full of lead as he realized what he already dreaded-- the whole tour had gotten the gist of what had gone down pretty quickly. The drink sounded better and better. The one upside, or downside, Patrick couldn’t tell, was that Pete was nowhere in the long list of people who had texted him. He would probably have to talk to Pete eventually, but. But. That was a whole other problem, and Patrick decided to try and be methodical. First, he would deal with the issue of the whole wide world feeling sorry for him. That was a large and thorny enough problem to take up a very long time.

            What Patrick needed, he decided, was an ally. Someone who wouldn’t treat him any differently but would still recognize this problem as large enough that they would help him. Usually his go-to guy was Pete, but since that wasn’t going to happen, he had to work through the rest of the tour. Andy and Joe were out of the question for a whole list of reasons. They were Pete’s friends first, Patrick was in the wrong, he shouldn’t divide the band on itself, and even if none of those applied Patrick had a sneaking suspicion that they would fall on the “pity” side of emotions towards him. Hard no.

            Gabe was Pete’s friend first, but the rest of Cobra Starship liked Patrick well enough. He would’ve liked to be able to talk to Vicky, but that felt shitty and unfair to her. She wasn’t his girlfriend by any definition, but it still felt mean in a way Patrick couldn’t explain.

            Panic at the Disco was Pete’s. No matter how much Brendon fawned over him, that relationship was unquestionable.

            Which, come to think of it, was the whole issue with Patrick’s plan. These were Pete’s friends, all of them. So what if they were Patrick’s friends too? They were closer to Pete, or they knew him first, or they liked him better, and being Pete’s friend at all was an issue because this was all Patrick’s fault. He did it to himself and probably made Pete exceptionally uncomfortable along the way. Possibly he had even assaulted him, Patrick thought, if Pete had pushed back that hard. The thought made his stomach swoop. The sick, anxious, nightmare older brother to having butterflies in his stomach.

            Since surely he had wasted hours thinking and overthinking this, Patrick checked the clock to see if hopefully it was time for soundcheck and he could get it over with and stop dreading it. Only five minutes had passed. He flipped open his phone again in the off-chance that someone had texted him with an out, but the same messages remained. _r u ok? What happened? Did something happen with you and Pete? what’s up w/ pete?_

The texts were scary enough for him to put off leaving his room for a few more hours. He found an old book of poetry wedged between the bedside table and the bed, one of the few books he could find on the bus. (Why did he never read?) He went to open it at random, but the spine had given in at some point in the book, sagging open to one page. A passage was underlined in red gel, a likely sign it was Pete’s. The thought made it hurt more, but Patrick was starting to get a sick pleasure out of picking at his mental wounds, so this was just another fun exercise.

“Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

 

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?”

            He read it over and over till he couldn’t feel Pete in it anymore, and the words were just words. He glanced at his phone again, saw a few more concerned texts, and tried to regulate his breathing.

            It was nearing three in the afternoon, and though Patrick was pretty sure he would be okay and would probably in fact benefit from hunger striking in the back room, his mouth was dry and he had to piss. _Get it over with_ , he thought to himself. _Like ripping off a bandaid_.

            He checked his reflection over in the screen of his computer that had gone dark. He couldn’t see colors well in the black screen, but he didn’t think he looked like he had been crying. (Crying. Jesus.) His clothes were rumpled, but probably not moreso than usual. He applied (reapplied?) deodorant and walked out into the rest of the bus.

            It only went quiet for a moment, then Sola grinned and said, “Good morning, Patrick!” with a little wave. Patrick smiled a tiny smile. He had forgotten about Sola and Atalia and had the maddeningly delightful thought that maybe two whole people didn’t know how head over heels he was for Pete Wentz.

            Patrick suspected that Andy was giving him a look, but he kept his eyes trained on Sola as he sat down at the table.

            “Morning,” he said. “How’d you sleep?” He had thought about how his voice would sound after a night of crying and was mortified by the jagged cadence of his voice and the way words caught in his throat. Sola looked a little confused at the sound of his voice, but she didn’t comment on it.

            “Not bad. I could get used to this bus thing,” she said. “Although I’ve been up for ages. How long have you been out? Do you do anything but sleep and perform?”

            “I’m also a producer goblin,” he said, and coughed to clear his throat. The horrible sound of his voice didn’t go away. “Other bands kidnap me and lock me in basements until I polish their albums for them, and then my band has to rescue me.”

            “It’s true,” Andy said sagely. “We keep tails on Panic so they can’t get their hands on him.”

            At least Andy was good at taking a hint. Patrick couldn’t fault him there.

            He made small talk with Sola for a minute before going to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, blotchier than he had seen it in the screen of the laptop, but not horrific. He surveyed himself a little closer in the mirror, trying to see anything that might look off about him. Maybe if he looked normal, if he pretended everything was normal, everyone else would go along with it.

            While he was looking, he caught sight of some small purple blotches down at the base of his neck. He pushed his collar back to look at them better. None of them were very dark, pale purples and yellows, but they were still fresh, and when he pressed down with his finger, it ached.

            _Pete’s mouth was there_.

            The lump Patrick had spent hours swallowing rose again in his throat, and his eyes felt glassy. He stared forward, willing the tears to dry up rather than fall. He was not going to fucking cry.

            The moment passed, and he walked back into the back room in search of a hoodie, something that would cover up most of his neck so that neither he nor anyone else had to see that. He wasn’t sure if he needed a shower or not, which probably meant that he did but then again, nobody would be getting that close to him, so it didn’t matter. He walked out and directly into Andy, who appeared to have just been hesitating outside of the door to the back half of the bus. He gave Patrick an embarrassed smile.

            “Soundcheck?” Patrick asked.

            “Soundcheck,” Andy said. He hesitated, and Patrick braced himself. “Are you-”

            “Do not fucking finish that question,” Patrick said. The warm, fuzzy feelings towards Andy dissipated. His stomach felt full of the swooping again, larger than butterflies, nerves and embarrassment all crashing as one. He wanted to ask Andy how bad it was going to be, but he could not bring himself to do that. He tried to hold himself straight.

            “So you know,” Patrick said. It wasn’t quite a question, but he wanted an answer. Andy inhaled.

            “I know something,” he said. “Probably not all of it.”

            Patrick counted to ten, because he heard in movies and books that that helped center people. It didn’t really do anything for him.

            “That’s better,” he said. “Better that it’s… it’s not a big deal, okay? Nothing happened.”

            He glanced up at Andy, and Andy nodded, impassive.

            “Nothing happened,” he repeated.

            The two of them were the first in the band to reach soundcheck, which was good news for Patrick. He grabbed a guitar off the rack, taking a brief moment to feel guilty that he slept through bringing the gear into the venue. He picked listlessly at it to keep his hands busy more than to actually check the sound. The whole time he kept himself tense. Waiting.

            Patrick heard Pete before he saw him, heard him laughing. It was a loud, sincere laugh that echoed all the way from backstage, and Patrick felt some of the tightness in his muscles loosen. He distantly felt a little annoyed that Pete was happy, but mostly he felt relief. He hadn’t fucked everything up. He didn’t even hear what Pete was saying, just took a moment to cling to the microphone stand and plead to the universe that he didn’t fall over.

            It felt too quiet in the arena all of a sudden, and Patrick wondered if he was supposed to be saying something. He was still facing forward, holding the microphone stand too tight. But hearing Pete was enough. Looking at him was a whole other issue, and it was an issue for future-Patrick. Instead, he gathered his courage and spoke.

            “Can I get a little less volume for the main mic?” he called. He wasn’t sure if the main mic needed to be quieter or not before he spoke, but lucky for him he heard a bit too much feedback, and felt justified. Pete wasn’t laughing anymore, but Patrick couldn’t see what was wrong.

            One of the techs handed Patrick another guitar to test, and he caught sight of Joe out of the corner of his eye, looking down. Well. If they were taking their cues from him to stay silent, he could live with that.

            Sound check was just a quieter version of what it usually was. Each instrument got checked, and Patrick kept his eyes forward and down towards his shoes, as though the stage floor was particularly interesting. He’d have to deal with Pete eventually, probably actually on stage when the sea of girls expected Pete to be draped all over him. But he didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want to deal with this.

            “Great, let’s just check on the toasters,” Dan said, the words coming through nice and clear on Patrick’s headset. Patrick glanced stage left before he could think better of it.

            Pete looked the same, but he unfortunately caught Patrick’s eye before turning around as well.

            He looked bad. Red-eyed and with bedhead. Patrick looked down, but he felt like the damage had been done, spell broken. He stood completely still for a moment so that Pete would walk ahead of him, then slowly followed after.

            Patrick had managed to fuck this up.

            They got under the stage, tested the toasters that popped them out onto the stage at the start of the show, and thanked the techs, all without incident. Andy and Joe made quiet conversation with each other from time to time, Joe asking how Carmilla was and Andy gushing about her reading her first sentence the other night, and then they were gone. No one spoke to Pete or Patrick, though Patrick knew Pete and Joe had been talking before they saw him.

            A sick thought crossed Patrick’s mind for the first time-- what had Pete said to everyone? He trusted Pete with everything, and then he had to to pull off a stunt as monumentally stupid as just ripping his clothes off and going for it with no proof Pete had feelings for him. How many legendary “Pete Wentz’s Exes” stories had Patrick heard? How many times had he been one of the douchebags laughing at the poor fucking girl in a Pete Wentz story, the girl with the Say Anything style boombox, the crazy ex who stole his shampoo to smell like him, custody battles over a dog. He could easily be a fucked up party line.

            Whatever tumultuous thing was in Patrick’s stomach had him close to gagging by the time he was pounding on the door to the Cobra Starship bus. Nate answered, which wasn’t ideal, but was better than Gabe.

            “Victoria?” Patrick said. It was all he could get out, though in his head there was supposed to be either a “Can you get her?” or an “Is she here?” He could only picture how nuts he looked. Paler than usual, sweaty. Thinking about it was making him worse.

            Luckily, Nate waved him in without any questions. Patrick ended up on the couch, head between his knees, and someone rubbing circles into his spine, a familiar voice in his ear.

            “Jesus, you look awful,” Vicky said. Patrick laughed a little.

            “Don’t sugar coat it for me or anything,” Patrick said. He leaned into her touch though, practically melting into her side. Vicky was soft if not squishy like him, and warm.

            “You’d hate me if I did,” she said, and she was right. “Should I ask how you’re doing?”

            “You can,” he said. “I’m doing pretty shitty. But it’s my own fault.” He paused and sat up. The bus was either empty or the rest of the band had made themselves scarce, which was tactful, if so. “Who all knows and how much do they know?”

            “Everyone and everything,” Vicky said. Patrick groaned.

            “Everything?” he echoed.

            “Well, not everything,” Vicky said. “Just-- the tour has a pretty good picture of last night.”

            “How much is a pretty good picture?” Patrick asked. He braced for the worst, but he wasn’t certain how much longer he could suffer through existence if Mark fucking Hoppus knew he had thrown Pete on a bed and ripped his shirt off.

            “You… propositioned Pete,” she began, and Patrick shook his head. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t want to hear this, but he _had_ to.

            “All the gory details,” he said. “I need to know how bad it actually is.”

            “Ryan said you told Pete that you had feelings for him,” Vicky said. She grimaced at him, an apologetic expression that was doing nothing for Patrick’s confidence. “And Pete told Gabe that he, er, pushed you off. Off the bed. Because you two had been, um-”

            “Making out shirtless?” Patrick finished dully. “Super. Think the techs’ll spare me some rope?”

            “That’s not funny,” Vicky said.

            “Jesus, it’s only not funny if you’re actually worried,” Patrick said. “I’m not gonna kill myself. Probably. Does +44 know?”

            “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

            “Well then. Silver lining.” Patrick wat there for a moment, then the terrible thought he’d had earlier hit him again with a vengeance. “Pete told you all that?”

            “No, Pete told Gabe that,” Vicky said. “And then Gabe just. He had good intentions, Rick. He didn’t want anyone saying anything stupid to either of you.”

            “He couldn’t have warned people off with fewer details?” Patrick asked.

            “I’m sorry,” she said.

            “For what?”

            “I don’t know. For knowing, for listening. That it happened at all. How are you?”

            “Still shitty,” Patrick said. He pulled his feet up onto the couch, wrapping his arms around his knees protectively. “So. Now what?”

            “Now we get wasted and watch Ghostbusters?” Vicky said. “I can give you pity sex, but I feel like you’ll turn it down because you know it’s pity sex.”

            “I might not turn it down after I’m wasted,” he said. “You already have a copy?”

            Not only did Vicky have a copy, but it turned out that the rest of Cobra Starship (barring Gabe) seemed to really love 80’s movies and expensive liquor. There was whiskey, good stuff, not a bottle of Fireball bought at a gas station.

            Cobra Starship was also familiar, but unthreatening. He was used to borderline being their boss, but moreso being a friend and coworker. They weren’t acting like they felt sorry for him, they were acting like they were just friends, hanging out, having a good time, and watching movies. Patrick started to feel almost normal until they were about fifteen minutes into the movie.

            “ _Hey, hey- Pete_!”

            Patrick’s stomach sank.

            Dr. Peter Venkman.

            _The main character’s name was Peter_.

            Patrick stared, and the rest of the band froze. He took a long, long pull of whiskey that burned its way down his esophagus.

            “Wanna switch to Star Wars?” he asked. They all knew why. He didn’t need to make the effort to be subtle. And they all agreed.

            And the nervous fluttering in Patrick’s stomach just got worse and worse while they switched out the DVDs. Not butterflies in his stomach, he realized, but bats.

            He had lost count of how many shots he was in by the garbage compressor scene when his phone lit up with a text from KTC that read “Vampires?”

***

            Hemingway was Pete's favorite person in the world. It didn't really matter that Hemingway wasn't a person, because Pete wasn't doing too hot with people. Sure, Andy and Joe hated him, and Patrick was likely never speaking to him again, and the rest of the tour was eyeing him with mixed states of disdain and incredulity, but his dog? He always loved Pete. Even though Pete was a self-loathing fuck up. Hemingway would always love him.

            Pete had fucked up.

            He knew he’d fucked up when Patrick ran out of the room, but he couldn’t get up, even with Hemmy licking his hand and whining concernedly. He was stuck on the bed, staring at the door, still shirtless and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him. But he had no idea how to fix it.

            He didn’t know how long he was frozen before he stood up, because it felt like it had been incomprehensibly long, but by the time he was running down the length of the bus to see if he could do anything to fix this, Patrick was still outside, shouting at Gabe.

            If for no other reason than Patrick would hate it, he didn’t run out after him immediately. He wasn’t going to cause a scene in front of the tour, because in terms of trying to get Patrick to forgive him, that was possibly the worst thing he could even imagine doing. He stayed on the bus, or maybe he hid.

            It didn’t take long for Joe to join him.

            “Hey,” Joe said, pausing in the doorway to look at him. “You okay?”

            Pete couldn’t imagine why Joe would ask something like that, until he realized he was just standing in the middle of the bus, shirtless and probably with hickies on his collar, just staring at the wall. Then, he supposed Joe was also in his head. Pete just made a noise in the back of his throat, an echo of his dog’s whine, and Joe nudged him down onto the couch.

            “What’s wrong?” he tried. Pete shook his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears.

            “I think I might have fucked up,” he said. It was strange how he felt like he was falling apart, but he wasn’t crying, wasn’t showing any real signs of falling apart.

            There was a pained spasm of emotion across Joe’s face as he sat down next to Pete.

            “Does it have to do with Patrick?” he asked.

            _Then_ Pete fell apart.

            “I- he- fuck!” Pete said. He didn’t want to be crying, but he was, and oh God, he didn’t know how to fix this. Hemingway scrambled around his feet until Pete leaned back so he could jump up on his lap. Joe didn’t reach out to him with any physical comfort, just kept staring at him nervously. Joe also glanced down at his cell phone and his frown deepened as he did.

            “Pete,” Joe said, a little more insistently. “What happened?”

            “He told me he loved me,” Pete said.

            Joe was quiet for a minute.

            “That doesn’t seem like a bad thing,” Joe said. “Isn’t that… kind of what you were hoping for? Like, I’ve tried to stay out of this drama as best I can, but I do really remember that being something you would be happy about.”

            “I turned him down,” Pete said. Their bus went dead silent save for the dog’s breathing, then he continued. “After he kissed me.”

            “Holy-”

            “And took his shirt off.”

            “-fucking-”

            “And told me he was in love with me.”

            “-Christ! Why?” Joe demanded.

            “Because I’m going to kill him!” Pete shouted. He wouldn’t look in Joe’s eyes, but he could easily imagine the disapproval in them.

            “You- okay, holy shit, that doesn’t make any kind of sense,” Joe said. “I know you don’t have the best track record with girls, but Patrick’s not gonna cheat on you and you’re not going to ruin his life. You two would be different. And you’re not as toxic as you think you are, okay? You love him, and you wouldn’t be like that.”

            Somehow, Joe had made it worse.

            “That wasn’t what I meant, but I guess that’s something to think about too,” Pete said, feeling even more miserable. He didn’t want to be crying, and he wasn’t really, but his eyes still felt hot.

            “Then what?” Joe asked. “Is it the band? I already fucking told you-”

            “Ryan made a prophecy,” Pete said. His voice felt dull and spent even to himself. “It said if Patrick and I ever got together he would die. Probably. So I turned him down.”

            Joe took the information without emoting, then took in a deep breath.

            “How did you even say that to him?” he asked. “I mean, if you can’t lie.”

            “He only said ‘yes or no,’” Pete said. “So I said no.”

            Joe looked like he felt sorry for Pete, but there was still a righteous anger coming off him.

            “There was a prophecy,” Joe said. “I don’t suppose you told Patrick there was a prophecy?”

            That didn’t actually seem like that bad of an idea, but Pete was in this deep. He shook his head no, hunching in on himself.

            “Right, that would’ve been too fucking logical,” Joe said. He looked like he had a headache. “Okay, so go explain to him?”

            “I don’t think he wants to talk to me,” Pete said.

            “Yeah, like you’ve ever waited to see if someone wanted to talk to you,” Joe said. “Tell him you fucked up.”

            “I can’t!” Pete shouted. “It’s- it’s fucking Patrick, dude! If I tell him the world will end if we get together, he’ll shrug and say the world’ll end eventually anyway! He doesn’t give a fuck about his personal safety, and I’m not going to doom him.”

            “You might have a point,” Joe admitted after a minute. “But still, you can’t just leave it here. Andy said he’s bad. How are we supposed to do band shit like this?”

            “Like what?” Pete asked. “I hurt him, but he’s Patrick. He’ll get over it and maybe hate with me and we’ll work past it and he’ll forget he ever had feelings for some dick like me.”

            “No,” Joe said. “You hurt him, but _he’s Patrick_ and he’s just going to stew in it forever and pretend he’s fine if we’re lucky and make life painful for the rest of us if we’re not. How do you not get that?”

            “It’s not that fucking big of a deal,” Pete said. He was glaring at Joe then, real venom in his voice. “It’s also none of your business and I’m not happy about it either.”

            “No,” Joe agreed, “But it is your fault.”

            “SHOULD I JUST LET HIM DIE, THEN?”

            Pete wouldn’t look Joe in the eyes still, but he was furious. He couldn’t say all he wanted to, that it was much harder for him than anyone could imagine, that it hurt him the most, but what good would it do?  
            Joe went silent as well. He checked his phone again and made a face, texting back quickly.

            “You’re not going to tell him?” he asked.

            “Alive he can move on and fall in love with someone else,” Pete said.

            “Okay,” Joe said. “Okay. I’m gonna call Andy and I’ll be back in a sec.”

            Pete waited. He didn’t know where his phone was, but he didn’t think he’d be able to check it anyway. He wasn’t feeling up for doing much more than staring at the wall. He heard Joe talking in the other room but couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. It sounded like he was trying to convince him of something, and then he poked his head around the corner.

            “How much do you want anyone else to know about all of this?” Joe asked, and bless him for doing so. Pete shrugged.

            “I mean, you can tell Andy,” Pete said. “Gabe. That’s all. I don’t want it to be a big thing.”

            Joe disappeared again with the phone still in hand.  This time it felt like he was gone for longer, but Pete’s brain felt like TV static. He couldn’t really measure time, just kept scratching behind Hemingway’s ears.

            Joe plopped down next to him with a sigh.

            “That was Andy,” he said.

            “Hmm?”

            “Patrick’s not feeling super talkative at the moment.”

            The decision was done, Pete thought, so all there was left to do was to follow through with it. If he was going to try and keep Patrick safe, then he was going to try and keep Patrick safe.

            Joe went to bed eventually, leaving the curtain undone and giving Pete a pointed look before laying down. It was a warning look, though Pete wasn’t sure what the warning was for. By then, the buses were moving and there wasn’t much stupid shit left that Pete could do to fuck up the world.

            He didn’t even have much time to himself to feel bad about it all. As soon as the buses stopped at the next venue, Gabe was sitting across from him, snapping his fingers in front of Pete’s face.

            “Hey, I know about the prophecy,” he said. Who didn’t, Pete wondered. Other than Patrick.

            “How?”

            “We used compulsion wine on Ryan,” Gabe said, shamelessly. “So what the fuck happened?”

            “First off, don’t ever drug an underaged kid on my label again,” Pete said, but without much fervor. “Second, if you asked Ryan, then you already know what happened.”

            “I don’t know the whole story,” Gabe said. And then, for some reason, Pete told him. Gabe let him get the whole thing out, from being jealous of the entire city of Chicago to Joe realizing when they swapped bodies to Patrick finally realizing that he had feelings for Pete as well. What it was like to finally kiss, not cursed or drugged but just lost in one another. He might have lingered too long on that thought, not stopping until he felt the sharp raking of emotion inside his ribcage.

            When he finally finished, Gabe whistled, long and low.

            “Well that’s fucked,” he said.

            “Are you pissed at me too?” Pete asked.

            “No,” Gabe said. “You, ah, probably could’ve handled that better, but I get it. No one’s pissed at you, actually.”

            “Just my whole band,” Pete said.

            “Joe is pissed at the whole situation, Andy is concerned, and Patrick- well he might be pissed at you, but you had to know that was a risk.”

            “I wasn’t exactly thinking critically,” Pete said. There wasn’t enough biting sarcasm in his words for his taste.

            “Now what?”

            “Like I’ve got an answer,” Pete stood up, and realized that he had been sitting for a really long time. All of his muscles ached when he walked into the kitchen, and no matter how much he stretched he couldn’t dissipate the soreness.

            “Do you know what you’re going to say to him?”

            “I was gonna wait for him to say something first.”

            “Oh no,” Gabe said. “Fall Out Boy’s gonna break up waiting for one of you to talk.”

            Pete turned to give him a sharp retort, but the door opened again before he could say anything. Andy threw something that looked suspiciously like a bag of blood into the fridge and set up the coffee, then turned to Pete.

            “Shouldn’t you be with Patrick?” Gabe asked.

            “It’s before noon, he’s not awake,” Andy said. “Pete. Joe filled me in.”

            “And?” Pete asked warily.

            “And what do we do now?”

            Pete felt a surge of comfort at the word “we,” but he still just shook his head.

            “No way out but through and all that,” he said. “I’m gonna try and get some sleep.”

            Still unable to lie, Pete had every intention of trying to get sleep. He knew he wouldn’t, but he had every intention. He laid down in his bunk for a few hours. After the first fifteen minutes of staring at the ceiling, he decided he couldn’t stand the sound of the inside of his brain any longer and instead opened his laptop.

            Pete already had, to the best of his knowledge, completely exhausted all information on dragons, but he still wanted to prepare, to do something useful. After thinking about it for a minute, he searched “Azazel.”

            Funny enough, but Pete had never actually Googled his demon dad before. The Google of his teenage years was too shitty to be usable, and there weren’t really any search engines before then, at least none that Pete knew about. When his parents first explained the Azazel situation, Pete was already a teenager, and he found out more on his own through library catalogues and asking some of the strange colleagues he met at New Age stores in downtown Chicago.

            It was mostly the same edgy religious shit he always found. Bound to the jagged rocks to suffer in the dark until judgement day, taught women the art of deception and men the art of war. He learned that some people thought he was the actual devil rather than Lucifer, and that apparently there was a character on a TV show named after him. But one article buried under the Wikipedia page suggested that he might not be a Christian entity at all, and instead a degraded Babylonian deity. It was interesting yes, but Pete had no idea how it could help. He knew fuckall about Babylon, and his mom had been pretty firm on the story of the Grigori, so he couldn’t imagine this having anything to do with his father.

            The research did, if nothing else, help the time pass until it was time for soundcheck. The dread Pete had been trying to avoid coiled in his stomach as he dragged himself out of the bunk. He didn’t know how Patrick was going to react today, but he could only hope it was somewhat charitable.

            Andy had left at some time, so Pete was walking with Joe when he saw Ashlee.

            _Ashlee_.

            Pete had forgotten about his own girlfriend.

            Worse, she hadn’t gone onto the bus. She was in amongst the tour buses and the crew, but she was leaning up against the door of her car, fingers drumming on the tinted windows.

            “I’ll give you two a minute,” Joe said. He gave Pete a look that could’ve been a warning or a “good luck.”

            Pete walked to Ashlee slowly, intensely aware of the hot sun and the open area around them. This felt like a scene waiting to happen, Ashlee cool and impassive behind sunglasses and Pete, a rumpled mess who had fucked up and didn’t know how to lie. He stopped a full two feet away from her and let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

            “I think it’s usually more polite to do these kinds of things in person,” Ashlee said after a second. “That’s the rule, right? That it’s shitty over the phone?”

            Pete blinked at her.

            “You’re breaking up with me?” he asked.

            “I’d love for you to ask me not to,” Ashlee said. “But I don’t think you will.”

            “What does that- what do you mean?” Pete asked.

            “I mean you’re not here for this. Are you?”

            “Here for this?” Pete was too muddled to make sense of what she was saying, and to his relief, Ashlee took of the sunglasses. Her eyes were a little puffy, but she wasn’t currently crying. Pete felt sickly, selfishly grateful, because he couldn’t deal with someone else’s tears, not then.

            “You’re a great guy, Pete,” Ashlee said. “Better than people give you credit for. And I really, really like you. But I don’t think that goes both ways.”

            “You’re breaking up with me because you don’t think I’m into you?” Pete asked.

            “I don’t think, I know,” Ashlee said. “I’m sure you think I’m pretty, but that isn’t enough. And you don’t love me, do you?”

            Jesus, Pete was in a twisted mirror of his conversation from last night, trying to find a way to tell someone he loved them when he didn’t mean it rather than the other way around.

            “I like being with you,” he said. “You get it, get me better than I ever thought you would.”

            Ashlee sighed again. Pretty as ever, she mostly looked tired then, and Pete didn’t want to cause her anymore pain. Didn’t want to hurt anyone else with his collateral damage.

            “You’re sweet,” Ashlee said. “But I think I should go. Move on, you know? I do love you, but you’re always so distracted. I don’t know what it is,” she was lying, Pete noted, “But whatever it is, you should go for it. You should go love all passionately and write happy lyrics for once.”

            This was the calmest breakup Pete had ever had thus far, even as he was wracked with guilt.

            “Should I ask you to stay?” he asked. Ashlee smiled at him and kissed him once. She tasted cool and fruity, like strawberry flavored chapstick, but she was right. There was nothing there.

            “Probably not,” she said. She looked him over once, seeing more than she should, more than anyone expected her to, as always. “You’re not this upset over me?”

            “It’s a long story,” Pete said. “Probably not one you want to hear, but thanks.”

            Ashlee leaned into him and pecked the corner of his mouth with one more kiss.

            “I trust you,” she said. “And good luck. You wanna try being friends?”

            “Give it a few months,” Pete said. “And you’ll have to take the lead. I’ve never been friends with an ex before.”

            “We’ll learn together,” she said. She was already climbing back into her car. She rolled down the window after shutting the door and threw a hoodie at him. “I’ll call you later?”

            “Sounds good,” Pete said. She peeled out of the parking lot. Pete let out one short laugh for himself. He was already walking back towards the venue when he felt Joe’s arm around him.

            “You in trouble?” Joe asked.

            “Not exactly,” Pete said. “She doesn’t know about whatever last night was, but she broke up with me anyway.”

            “Oh,” Joe said, and he looked Pete up and down. “Am I sorry?”

            “Not especially,” Pete said. “Or, you can be, but I’m not.”

            “That’s new,” Joe said, and Pete didn’t even get mad at him. He started laughing instead, somewhere between amused and hysterical as they walked into the venue.

            “Yeah, it is new,” he said. “Man, what’ll the press do with me now?”

            They were both laughing when they walked on stage, Pete’s laughter cut off suddenly by the sight of Patrick. It was just him from behind, but it was way too much. When he called instructions up to the techs his voice sounded ragged and used, and though he wasn’t shrinking away from Pete, Pete felt like he shouldn’t get close to him. He told himself that it wouldn’t be weird if he didn’t let it be weird, but it was way too weird anyway. And he knew in the back of his head that it wasn’t going to get better if he didn’t talk to Patrick, but there was nothing at all he could say to him at this point.

            He craved him, emotionally and physically. If he could just have one or the other it would be better, he knew it.

            He was certain this would stop being so weird if he said something.

            And yet.

            Pete’s day was going badly enough when he got the group text about vampires. He was pretty damn sure that the last thing they all needed as a group was a monster fighting mission, but it was either going along with that or telling his touring manager that he and his singer weren’t talking. That second option wasn’t going to happen. He started to call KTC as he stepped out of the bus but ran into him in person before the call connected.

            “Vampires?” Pete asked wearily. KTC looked him up and down, seemed troubled by what he saw, but went on nonetheless.

            “Vampires,” he said. “Probably. You boys up for a hunt?”

            Pete was not up for a hunt, but it wasn't really the time to say that. He made a noise in the back of his throat that he hoped sounded affirmative, and said “what's the story?”

            “I'll wait until the whole band is here to tell you all of it, but there have been rumors about people disappearing by the edge of town at night…”

            He kept talking, but Pete wasn't really listening anymore. The whole band. He suspected that fighting together wouldn't be much worse than playing a show together. He sat back and waited, and because Andy and Joe were either psychopaths or idiots, they took so long that Patrick arrived next.

            Being this close to Patrick without any buffers was an extra kind of awkward. He already looked a little better than he had at soundcheck, more relaxed, but still there was an edge to him that Pete couldn't unsee. Also, with the ability to see his aura, Pete could tell just how badly he was actually doing.

            Since Patrick was looking down, Pete stared at him, clearly a glutton for pain. He couldn't pick apart the individual emotions in Patrick's aura-- they were muddled and swirled in a way that told Pete that Patrick had been drinking (and drinking before going onstage was a whole other issue, but Pete wasn't going to be the one to bring it up.) He was still devastated, but he was holding together well. Ish.

            Pete should just say something. Anything.

            He opened his mouth to speak, to even just say “hi,” but Patrick spoke over him.

            “Vampires, you said?”

            “We think it's vampires,” KTC said. “We don't know yet.”

            “Aren't vampires easy to figure out?” Patrick asked. “Drained of blood, track marks on their necks? Also, who is ‘we’? Is there some secret council of people finding monsters for us to kill?”

            “More or less,” he said. “Old days club of informants, I’ve told you this before.”

            “Pretty sure we pay you to keep telling us shit we’ve heard before,” Patrick said. “The vampires?”

            “We’ve had a lot of dead bodies washing up with no bite marks,” KTC said. “Totally drained, but not bitten. I suppose it could be gang activity, but-”

            “Probably vampires,” Patrick said wearily. “Sure. Awesome.”

            “We don’t _have_ to deal with it though, if we’re busy, right?” Pete asked. KTC stared at him.

            “I guess not,” he said. “But you guys don’t. You don’t ah, turn this crazy shit down.”

            “But if it bugs… someone,” Pete said. Patrick still didn’t look at him, but his aura flashed in annoyance.

            “Or we don’t all have to go,” Patrick said. “If we don’t know what it is, then one of us could look into it. Alone. I wouldn’t mind going out.”

            “That’s not the best idea, you know, in case it is vampires,” Pete said. He could see KTC giving them strange looks, probably because neither of them was looking at the other, but at him instead. Pete didn’t turn to Patrick to ease the strangeness.

            “Riiiiight,” KTC said. “Um, anyway, I’ll explain when Andy and Joe-”

            “Sorry we’re late,” Joe said. He and Andy jogged across the pavement to them. “Incident with Carmilla and Brendon’s wrist, nothing to worry about. Vampires?”

            “Maybe vampires,” KTC said. “As I was telling Pete and Patrick, quite a few people have shown up with all their blood drained.”

            “So, a vampire,” Andy said.

            “Not necessarily,” KTC said. “They’ve been drained of all their blood, but not from the throat. They’ve all been pierced in the femoral arteries, then drained, and then dumped, no motives, no connections between victims.”

            “Suicide?” Pete guessed.

            “Pierced, not cut. Also, the crimes are identical. And on top of that, the victims show signs of post-mortem bruising that indicates someone hung them up to fully drain them of their blood, _and_ -”

            “How the shit did you hear all of this?” Patrick asked. He shrugged.

            “Lots of sources. I’ll skip to the most damning piece of evidence?”

            “If you don’t mind,” Andy said dryly, “We have to be onstage in two hours, so…”

            “The bodies have only been showing up in cities the tour is stopping at.”

            The band as a whole didn’t really have a good plan for hunting down the ambiguous threat, but Pete convinced them to start by going to the place where the last bodies turned up. Planning was brief and painless, but once they were in a car, the awkwardness was back with a vengeance. Patrick sat in the front seat next to Joe, and Pete and Andy sat in the back, Pete stretching out to take up more space than usual. After nearly five minutes of dead silence, Andy said:

            “Vampire cult, maybe? Like the Dandies? I could call Prudence and the Salem Girls, ask them.”

            “Yeah, you should do that,” Joe said. “I’m gonna, ah, radio.”

            Joe turned on music, and it might have helped, but Joe announcing it had somehow made the whole thing worse.

            The city park where the last two bodies had turned up wasn’t far, but it also wasn’t the ideal place to investigate. It was just nearing sunset, and the park was still full of kids and their parents, even an ice cream truck. The four of them sat in the car for a full minute just staring at the park, and Patrick sighed.

            “Are we old enough to look like pedophiles? I feel like we’re old enough to look like pedophiles.”

            “Pete probably is,” Joe said. “But he’s also Pete Wentz. You think we can get anything here?”

            “Let’s give it a shot,” Patrick said. He swayed a little getting out of the car, and Pete wondered if anyone else saw it, but didn’t say anything. The rest of them followed, and Pete finally noticed that it was sort of a nice day.

            They just wandered around the park, probably looking suspicious given that they were four grown men. Pete really wasn’t expecting anything other than an awkward evening stroll, but to his surprise, Andy stopped and inhaled deeply.

            “What?” Pete said.

            “The blood,” Andy said. “Or, the murder. I can still smell it.”

            “You can?” Pete said.

            “Blood seeped into the ground,” Andy said. “And-- shit, it might be in my head, but I think I can find out where it’s going.”

            “Really?” Joe said. He inhaled deeply, but shook his head. “It’s just you.”

            “That’s fine,” Andy said. “I can get it. And hell, if they weren’t murdered here, the smell will probably get stronger the farther we go.”

            “What are we waiting for?” Patrick asked. The question stung at Pete like a slap because he didn’t sound enthusiastic, not even excited, but bitter and drunk. Not his Patrick. Some hard, dark replacement of his Patrick, and it was his fault, his fault, his fault.

            Luckily, Andy led them away from the park, across a quiet street into a small copse of trees. It didn’t strike Pete as the place where someone would commit a murder, but he supposed there couldn’t be conveniently large cemeteries and forests in every city they stopped at.

            Andy led them right into the center, where they could still hear the roar of traffic outside and pointed at the ground.

            “You see it?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” Joe said, as Pete and Patrick both said “No.”

            “Ugh,” Andy pulled out his phone and shone the blue light down on the ground. There was a muddy, reddish brown sigil painted all across the ground between the trees, thick where it seeped into the earth. All the trees in the circle around them were splashed with blood as well, too much of it, still dark and sticky and glistening wetly. Pete looked down at the symbol on the ground and realized that he recognized it. A circle with eight lines protruding from it like spokes of a wheel. The half of the spokes had triangles attached to the end, the other did not. Pete knew it from his research from that very day.

            “Azazel,” Pete said. And immediately after realized just how fucking stupid it was to say his name in the middle of a sigil made of blood.

            The splashes of blood on all the trees surrounding them lit up golden, beacons of sun-bright light that began to swirl around them. Joe didn’t even have the chance to yell at Pete before they went still and the gold began to dim slowly, till there was nothing but a pair of eyes reflected in each one. Pete stared at the eyes on the tree directly in front of him.

            “How good of you to call on me properly for once,” Azazel said. “Whatever is the occasion?”  
            “Purely an accident,” Pete said. “By the way, would you happen to know why your symbol is written in blood out here?”

            “I’m sure a smart boy like you can figure it out on your own,” the voice said, sounding very close to laughter. “But you’re helping the process along too. Charging it.”

            “Charging it?” Patrick said. “You’re the reason for all the dead bodies, right?”

            “You need a lot of blood to make something this big,” Azazel said. Pete felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. More deaths caused by him, more casualties to build up to something terrible, something he couldn’t stop.

            “Right,” Patrick said. “Well here’s the thing. I’m having a shit day, so this whole ‘charging’ thing? Not happening. Consider this pulling the plug.”

            Then Patrick unsheathed his knife and plunged it into the center of the tree, right between Azazel’s golden eyes.

***

            Patrick felt the pain in his arms first. It was a new pain for him, a harsh vibration not unlike having a jackhammer connected directly to his bones. The vibrating was emanating from the tree, jerking up his arms, through his shoulders, and down his back. He struggled to keep his head still with the distant thought that whiplash would suck right before a night of launching onstage.

            Because he was so busy trying to hold onto the handle of his knife no matter how much it ached, it took him a second to realize that the golden eyes in front of him were no longer impassive, but downturned in the middle, furious. He was making the bad guy angry, he was finally doing something to help, or something at all. The action felt good, and the heat in his chest that still burnt from the whiskey was spurring him on. He shoved the blade in deeper and sap oozed out over the blood, sticky and white. He thought he heard someone yelling, but he couldn’t be sure.

            “Get out of our lives,” Patrick said, so quiet he wasn’t sure if he was saying it more for himself or so that Azazel would hear it. He pushed the blade to the right to cut across the tree, and the screaming got louder, the vibrating up through the knife and into him picked up too much momentum, and in a flash he was thrown back a good ten feet, slamming into the tree on the opposite side of the circle.

            Patrick heard his skull crack against the bark of the tree before he felt it. As he crumpled to the ground he saw the gold in the bloody patches evaporate into thin, acrid black smoke. He finally felt the throbbing in his head and his back as he hit the ground, legs collapsing underneath him.

            He made one pained noise, lifting his hand up to the back of his head and pulling it away to find it stained a bright, cherry red. He felt a little nauseous. He took a second to process his injuries-- it felt like just bruises and soreness, aside from where he must have scraped the tender skin of his head. His knife was still stuck in the tree, sap dribbling out around it. He was about to stand up to walk over and try to pry it out of the tree when he finally noticed the yelling of his bandmates through the ringing in his ears.

            “Fucking dick-fuck!” Joe yelled, and Patrick felt a blow on the side of his face, which was really not helping with what felt like a concussion from hitting the tree. Patrick leaned forward, still nauseated, as starbursts of white bloomed across his vision.

            “Fucking ow,” he said mildly. He was aware that he was slurring. “Was that necessary?”

            “I don’t know, was stabbing the demon tree with no idea what it was going to do to you necessary?” Joe asked. He paused and leaned in closer to Patrick. “Are you drunk?”

            “No!” Patrick said. He was aware that he might be, actually, but he didn’t want to admit it to Joe. He felt suddenly self conscious and defensive, trying to struggle to his feet, though he was still shaking.

            “Jesus fucking Christ,” Joe said, and he turned away. Heat flushed through Patrick, and the final proof to him that he was drunk came in the fact that he didn’t just drop it.

            “At least I did something! You’re welcome!” Patrick shouted, too loud even for being angry. “Next time let’s all just sit back and let the demon taunt us while people get murdered, because that’s been working great for us so far! You could, hypothetically, say thanks.”

            “Yeah, but for some reason we don’t want you to get killed, so,” Joe glared at him. It took Patrick too long to realize that oh, right, they were probably more scared than angry. He glanced behind him out of curiosity, and saw the bark scraped off the tree was in a position that was fairly high off the ground. He simmered a little, unsettled, and looked around the circle. There were still faint remnants of smoke rising from the ground, but now he could see there were slash marks on all of the trees, identical to the deep gash he had made in the first one. Patrick still wasn’t quite sure what he’d done, but he suspected he’d done something right.

            “Well,” Patrick said. “I don’t think vampires have anything to do with this.”

            Andy rolled his eyes. He walked over to one of the trees and touched his finger to the blood spot. The rest of the band also began looking at the trees, investigating. Patrick stumbled to a tree nearby and leaned on it, unable to cringe away when his hand landed directly in the still tacky blood. It was cold but sticky in its thickness. He had to lean on the tree as his legs weren’t doing their job as well as they should have been. Not that anyone seemed to notice.

            “We should head back,” Pete announced. Patrick looked over at him, and Pete was still actively looking anywhere but at Patrick. “There’s definitely less energy here than there was before, but this might not be the only location. We’ll see if Dan can tell us any more about where these murders have been happening.”

            And then Pete was walking back to the car. And then Joe and Andy were walking back to the car, leaving Patrick to push himself forward as well, hoping his muscles would start cooperating as he walked. He paused briefly to wiggle his knife out of the tree, then followed after the rest of his band. He was quite a bit behind them with the time it took to extract the knife. He really hoped no one in the park looked too closely at him with his bloodied hands and neck, but before he could even cross the street towards the park and where they had left the car, he heard a voice in his ear, oppressively close to him and warm against his face.

            “I would watch yourself, if I were you.”

            Patrick waved away the voice of Azazel, just buzzed and pissed enough to not be afraid of a demon.

            “You should do the same,” he muttered. He very nearly tripped into the street without noticing that the flow of cars had not stopped. He hung back for a second, but one of the cars, still honking at him, pulled to a stop, and he finally crossed. Joe and Andy looked pissed when he finally got to the car.

            “How drunk are you?” Andy asked.

            “Not very,” Patrick said. He was trying to keep the acid out of his voice, but not getting pissed was more of a challenge then than it usually was for him. “Why?”

            “You almost got run over,” Andy said. Patrick sighed.

            “No, it was the fucking demon, he was-”

            “You really shouldn’t drink before shows,” Joe interrupted. Patrick narrowed his eyes, trying to explain how he wasn’t even that drunk, if they would just listen, but they were getting in the car.

            And Pete still wouldn’t look at him.

            “Fine,” Patrick muttered. He slid into the seat and rested his head in his hands for the whole ride back. Going out had been a waste of time, as per usual. But now they knew something else was up with Azazel.

            There wasn’t even time to go back to the buses before the show, so Patrick washed his hands and the back of his head in the green room and changed into a different outfit at the same time. He changed in the bathroom, not usually self-conscious about his body in front of his band, but not really wanting to think about being shirtless in front of Pete ever again.

            They only had a few minutes left to wait in the green room before going on stage, but the whole time was torturous. There was no task for them to focus on, nothing to do but wait or talk to each other, and Patrick wasn’t going to say anything to Pete. He should have apologized, he knew that much, but he didn’t even know how to start. He was still too upset with himself to say anything.

            Ryan came in, mercifully, when they had fifteen minutes left. No pre-show rituals that night, so there was nothing for him to interrupt. Ryan, wearing glasses that looked a hell of a lot like Brendon’s, slammed a stack of books down in the middle of the room. The books came almost up to Patrick’s waist, and Patrick stared at him.

            “Pete texted me,” Ryan said. “He mentioned charging and sigils and blood, and I need to do more research to confirm what’s going on with your demon, but I have a theory.”

            “What’s the theory?” Patrick asked. He was just sober enough to hear the slight blur on the edge of his voice, but he ignored that.

            “Right, so how many principles of magic do you guys know?” Ryan asked.

            “None, we don’t know a goddamn thing, so stop showing off and get to the point,” Joe said. Ryan huffed.

            “Fine. So, look, spells and symbols are charged over time, by multiple people so that they have more power, right? Right. I’ve never heard of someone charging a demon, but then I thought, what if they’re not charging the dude himself? What if they’re charging his spell?”

            “His spell?” Pete said, looking dubious. Patrick tried to look closer at his face to read his emotions, but Pete remained utterly impassive.

            “C’mon, Pete,” Ryan said. “You were the one who said dragons don’t exist.”

            “He has people charging the dragon,” Joe said. “What does that mean?”

            “The dragon was growing, wasn’t it?” Ryan said. He fell backwards onto the couch, looking way too pleased with himself while delivering terrible news. “Az- your demon put the thing into existence. Now his followers, and oh man, does he have a lot of followers, are making it stronger.”

            KTC, headset on, walked in the door next.

            “Hey, guys, get set. Show’s about to start,” he said, waving them forward.

            Pete whirled around to face Ryan.

            “Wait here, okay?” he said. “We need to finish this, just not right now.”

            Ryan saluted him, and Pete brushed past Patrick walking towards the stage. The phrase “cold shoulder” felt suddenly very literal. Patrick shrank back from Pete like he could feel wind coming off him. He was not going to cry backstage. Not if he had ruined everything, not if Pete was just being a dick, not if anything.

            “Ryan,” he said. “You can see the future, so did you-?”

            “Cheers,” Ryan said, tossing Patrick a bottle of something dark. Patrick took one gulp and set it down on the arm of the couch. He nodded thanks to Ryan, then hurried after the rest of his band.

            The show was an extra special brand of awful. The band dynamic was off, and Patrick could see it without watching videos or reading scathing articles. Rather than standing in Patrick’s personal space, Pete was holding very still on the opposite side of the stage. Because of this, Joe was the only one moving. It was weird, it was stilted, and Patrick was embarrassed to have been a part of it. He was immensely grateful to get off stage and into the rest of the bottle Ryan gave him.

            As promised, Ryan was dutifully waiting backstage.

            “Homework assignments,” he said. “I’ve got a few physical tomes with me that Pete and Andy can dig through. Joe, I’ve sent you the links to a couple of PDFs on the subject.”

            “And?” Patrick asked, waiting expectantly. Ryan looked frightened.

            “Um,” he said. Patrick had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “I didn’t want to bug you, or anything.”

            Patrick was not going to lose it, not when Ryan had been trying hard. But Jesus fucking Christ.

            Ryan did seem to know that he’d made a mistake, and he immediately pulled a smaller book out from somewhere (his pocket? Patrick didn’t see how one could fit a book in a pocket, but then again, it was Ryan) and handed it to him.

            “Curse breaking,” Ryan said. “Physically destroying the sigil like you did is the most surefire way to break the connection, but obviously you can’t go back to al the cities you’ve already passed through, so we should try and find a way to break the spell from a distance, if at all possible.”

            Patrick nodded. Ryan smiled at him, which was extra pitying coming from Ryan, but the thought that he was trying while still being Ryan sort of made up for it. Ryan left, but he had diffused enough of the awkwardness that Patrick felt a little better.

            “Hey, I might stay on another bus tonight, so you don’t have to like, wait up for me,” Patrick said to Andy. Andy gave him a look, a disapproving look that Patrick couldn’t quite decipher, and shrugged at him.

            “All right, sure. See you,” he said. Then he left. Patrick felt some of the angry bats in his stomach rising back up to his throat. If Pete had told everyone, was everyone mad at him?

            He had spent enough time agonizing and wondering. He grabbed Pete by the elbow as he was leaving.

            “We should talk,” he said. Pete looked like he was going to throw up.

            “Do we have to?” he asked. The sharpness behind Patrick’s eyes and the thick twisting in his stomach grew more noticeable, but he kept his head up.

            “Not- not if it makes you uncomfortable,” Patrick said. “Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

            “You’re sorry?” Pete looked at Patrick like he’d grown a second head.

            “I shouldn’t have come onto you like that,” Patrick said. “It was unfair to you and I. Ugh. I don’t know. I’m just sorry. I know that doesn’t stop it from being weird, but I am sorry.”

            “You don’t have to be-” Pete started, but he cut himself off. He glared at the ground, then looked back up, still not meeting Patrick’s eyes, but better than they had been. “It doesn’t have to be weird. We can just pretend it never happened, if you want.”

            That was a fantastic offer. Patrick wanted things back the way they were, and this was his out, his chance to have his best friend back. But it also wasn’t going to be that simple.

            “I don’t think I can,” he admitted. “I wish I could, but I. Ugh. I meant what I said about you and it’ll probably take some time, but we can work on going back to normal later?”

            “Yeah,” Pete looked unhappy, but Patrick saw no point in trying to lie to him. It was Pete. “But in the meantime-?”

            “I think I need space,” Patrick said. “But I didn’t, like, assault you or convince you I’ve completely lost it?”

            “No! Fucking hell, why would you think that?”

            Patrick shrugged. “You’ve been upset.”

            Now that Pete was speaking to him, Patrick realized how talking to him was a really bad idea. His warm familiar voice felt like torture in Patrick’s ears. It hurt to listen to him, to be this close, and to be continually reminded that he was _not wanted_.

            “I should go,” he said, eyes on the ground rather than on Pete. “But, yeah. Sorry.”

            He made his way to the Cobra Starship bus yet again, where Vicky told him that Gabe was out for the night, and he could have Gabe’s bunk for the night.

            “Or forever,” Alex said. “We could just trade you two out.” The bus cheered, and Patrick almost smiled. It felt like a much better place to be than around the strange coldness of his friends and the pain of being next to Pete. Lead-singer swap didn’t actually sound like a bad idea, but he doubted anyone else would go with it long-term.

            But for now, he had a decent place to be.

***

            Joe was in a band filled with idiots. Sure, he loved them, sort of, but they were idiots. He didn’t know what they could do better, so possibly he was an idiot as well, but really. They were just adamant on destroying their own lives. Specifically, Pete and Patrick.

            What Joe hadn’t quite said to Pete, what he didn’t know how to say to Pete, was that Patrick was reacting just as badly as Joe thought he would. That is to say, he was being self-destructive. And Joe had no idea at all how to fix it.

            So, as was his custom in times of trouble, he decided to wash his hands of the matter as much as was physically possible. In the meantime, there were plenty of mythological issues to worry about. Seeing the dragon as a spell rather than a creature didn’t seem like that big of a difference to Joe. After all, the thing was a few thousand pounds and bigger than his Chicago apartment building. What was the point in splitting hairs over where it came from?

            (There was also the very real option that Ryan could be wrong, but Pete seemed not to think so.)

            Joe was much more focused on the practical matter of getting Pete prepared to fight the physical dragon. He didn’t think breaking all the spells in the world would get rid of the dragon, maybe just make it a little weaker. And if they had, in fact, already found the weak spot in the roof of its mouth, then it didn’t seem to matter much.

            As the end of the tour got nearer and nearer, Joe got a little more panicked. Even though Pete had the supposed promise of safety, Joe didn’t like the idea of sending him into the literal mouth of a dragon anymore than he did the idea of shooting Pete and hoping for the best. But unless he and the rest of his band got very proficient at magic very soon, they were out of other options. Joe didn’t want to lose sleep fighting the inevitable, so he worked on what he could control.

            Two nights had passed since The Pete and Patrick Disaster, as he and Andy and the other bands had been calling it, and Joe all but dragged Pete out of his bunk that morning, pulling him out into a nearby grassy area while still in pajamas with three-inch-tall bedhead.

            “We have to practice right now?” Pete asked. “Look, I think I’ve got the jist of it. Stab up. It’s not that hard.”

            “This is something new,” Joe said, and he pulled the sword out from behind his back. Pete looked it up and down, a little intimidated.

            “That’s a big sword,” Pete said.

            “This,” Joe said, “Is a cruciform sword. Pretty common feudal weapon. Made famous with Lord of the Rings.”

            “Right,” Pete said. He was still staring at the sword. “Why aren’t we using a sword we already have?”

            “Cruciform swords are pretty long, and this one is longer than usual,” Joe said. “I had it custom made. I’ve got a sword guy.”

            “Why do you have a sword guy?”

            “Why do you have a demon guy, Pete? We’re musicians, we need this kind of stuff.”

            Joe held the sword out to Pete. Pete took the handle cautiously, like he thought it would bite, and promptly dropped it.

            “Fuck but that’s heavy!”

            “Silver and iron,” Joe said. Pete stared up at him in disbelief, and Joe shrugged.

            “So don’t cut yourself with it! We’re fighting something magical, I thought it would help.” Joe only felt a little guilty, because he really did think it would have the best success rate. He hoped Pete wouldn’t slash himself by accident.

            Pete picked up the sword again, holding it in both hands. Joe hadn’t thought it was that heavy, but he supposed he wasn’t really the best judge of whether or not things were difficult to pick up. Pete swung the sword down, from his shoulder to his waist, and he seemed a bit steadier. Pete nodded slowly, like he was getting into the swing of it, and turned away from Joe, swinging it again at his side with one hand, and then grabbing the bottom of the handle with his other hand and jabbing upwards.

            He looked like a king. The medieval fantasy sword didn’t hurt the picture either. Joe felt a strange pride watching Pete preparing to fight a monster, even in his pajamas with a bedhead. He smiled a little, because goddamn, maybe they could just do this.

            “We’ll have to get Vicky to practice a bit too,” Joe said. “And then I’ll get some more sandbags, and I also want you to practice running with it.”

            “Why running with it?” Pete asked.

            “You’re probably going to have to make the jump into the dragon’s mouth with a bit of a running start,” Joe said. “You said it was heavy. Think you can run with it now?”

            Pete eyed the sword and hefted it up again.

            “Maybe,” he said. “But I guess practice wouldn’t hurt.”

            “Then we’ve got it sorted,” Joe said. “For now, breakfast?”

            Joe took Pete to a diner nearby. It wasn’t really a good idea for them to go out, being Fall Out Boy. But Pete was wearing sunglasses and his hair still was a mess. More than that, he still looked like an emotional wreck. Joe felt bad for yelling at him the day before, but he wasn’t sure if he could just apologize. He knew Pete was upset and he could feel the guilt and regret seeping through the bond. But he could feel Patrick on the other side of the bond too.

            Falling in love with bandmates was a terrible idea, and both Pete and Patrick had managed to fuck that up. Now all that was left was for someone (Joe) to try and keep the two of them from falling apart.

            After they ordered food, Joe leaned back.

            “So,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

            “Well enough,” Pete said.

            “That’s bullshit,” Joe said.

            “I’m walking, aren’t I?” Pete asked. “Still breathing, still eating. Not going on drinking binges or anything…”

            “Not funny,” Joe said. “Look, we’ll talk to him, but you need someone too. Not to make this sound gayer than the situation already is, but I can feel you in my soul, dude, and you need someone to lean on. We’re worried about you right now.”

            Pete’s eyes grew narrow with apprehension.

            “When you say ‘we,’” he began.

            “Andy’s on his way,” Joe said. Right on time, Andy walked in, the diner bell tinkling over the door as he made his way over to the table and squished Pete up against the wall.

            “Have we gotten to the point yet?” Andy asked.

            “Not yet,” Joe said. “Nearly. Look, the point is that yes, Patrick is an idiot, but he’s an adult idiot, and you should tell him the truth.”

            “Are you two actually ganging up on me here?” Pete asked. Joe felt the double echo of Pete’s betrayal on his face and through the bond.

            “We’re not ganging up on you,” Andy said. “We’re not making you do anything. We just think that you two should talk about this.”

            “Didn’t Ryan even say that it could be about something stupid?” Joe asked.

            “Could be! It could be!” Pete said. “And the prophecy said ‘love requited,’ so what if it just means that he knows I love him?”

            “Maybe,” Joe said. “But you should talk to him about it anyway, because there’s no way for you to know for sure.”

            “We can talk about something else,” Pete said.

            “We have another tour right after this, so we should really talk about-”

            “We can talk about something else,” Pete said, teeth gritted. The waitress came by with their food, asked Andy if he wanted anything, and walked off. Pete didn’t even unroll his utensils, and instead kept sipping water. Things had gone off track.

            “The dragon, then,” Joe conceded. “We need to get its head down to ground level. Somehow. Do we know what attracts dragons?”

            Pete took a long time before replying, eyes still downturned.

            “I’ve been doing research,” he admitted. “Mostly on Azazel, actually, but if Ryan’s right, and this dragon is just a spell, we should be able to make it come down for us.”

            “Yeah?” Andy asked. He was being gentle and encouraging, possibly because he, like Joe, realized that they had pushed too far.

            “The sigil,” Pete said. “It was the symbol for Azazel, and if the spell is his, we could do something similar to attract the dragon. I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, if we use a little of my blood, I’ll smell like his creator. You know, in a metaphysical sense.”

            “You got any sources to back that plan up?” Joe asked.

            “Hope, and some of Ryan’s old books,” Pete said. “Sola would work too, since she summoned Azazel the first time, but I don’t want to put her in any more danger.”

            “Yeah,” Joe said. “Poor kid. You think she’ll be okay?”

            “I don’t know,” Pete said. “I ran out of answers a long time ago.”

            Joe kept shoveling breakfast into his mouth between talking. It was good, greasy middle America food, even though they were on the West coast. He also couldn’t help but notice that Pete still hadn’t touched his.

            Joe finished his breakfast mostly in silence, and Andy was able to guilt Pete into a few bites, but he wasn’t eating much, not enough for Pete Wentz to survive a day of being himself all over tour. Still, neither of them pushed it. Pete was desolate, and Joe had the sinking feeling that he was making it worse. The least he could do was stick around him, make sure he wasn’t alone with his thoughts for too long.

            They had a break from interviews, so Joe and Andy camped out in Pete’s bus together for the day. They did normal things, not just normal for them, but actual normal. They played video games, something that felt like Joe hadn’t done in centuries. It was nice, and he should have known that it wasn’t going to last.

            “Someone’s dead,” was how KTC announced himself, coming onto the bus. “The police just found the body not far from here. Wanna check it out?”

            “Did you tell Patrick?” Joe asked.

            “In the car,” KTC said.

            Patrick was sitting in the driver’s side, and he all but snarled when Joe gave him an apprehensive look.

            “I woke up two hours ago, jackass,” Patrick said. “You wanna do a breathalyzer?”

            “No,” Joe said. He got in the front seat and tried to eye Patrick more surreptitiously.  He knew Patrick needed help with whatever he was going through too, but Joe intended to handle this one band member at a time.

            The drive was short and silent, Andy and Joe trying to make conversation with Pete. He knew how to make conversation with Pete, but it was harder with Patrick. He wasn’t yet sure what Patrick’s pressure points were in regards to the situation, and he didn’t want to set him off at the wrong moment.

            It didn’t take long to find the alley where the dead man had shown up because this time they were so early that the police tape was still up all around the entrance to the alley. There were still police officers standing around, some with coffee cups in hand. Joe didn’t even have to roll down the window, just told Patrick to keep driving, because there was no way they were getting anything done around that crowd.

            “Now what?” Andy asked.

            “You wanna drive around the block and see if you can smell it?” Pete suggested.

            “Not that kind of bloodhound,” Andy said. “We’re in a city. There’s no way I’ll be able to smell blood from that far away.”

            “Fantastic waste of time, guys,” Patrick said, sharper than Joe was used to, but then, he hadn’t heard much of Patrick talking the last couple days. “Look, we’re in the middle of the city. Can’t we just look around and see if there’s a group of trees anywhere near here where someone could do this stupid ritual?”

            Since that wasn’t a terrible plan, they all agreed to look around. Look around meant driving around, but the area remained stubbornly urban, and the car remained stiflingly quiet. Eventually Joe rolled down a window just so some sound and fresh air would penetrate the thick silence of the car. It helped a very little. The wind was a bit easier to breathe, and the sound of other people out living their lives was welcome.

            Patrick wove carefully through the blocks, trying to cover as much of the neighborhood as possible, but the only sign of trees at all were the solitary ones planted in between patches of sidewalk. Knowing their luck, Joe figured that whoever had done this had taken the blood hours away and dumped the bodies in the city just to flaunt it to the band. He was prepared to ask Patrick to just take them back to the tour when Andy sat up very straight.

            “Stop the car,” he said. Patrick pulled over to the sidewalk before turning to give Andy a questioning look. Andy didn’t see it, however, because he was already out of the car and walking fairly quickly down a side alley.

            Joe got out and followed. Andy was walking briskly, but not running, which Joe took to mean that there was no danger in following him. The alley was tiny, barely big enough for a loading truck, and empty but for trash and a dumpster. It was just past the dumpster that Andy stopped. Joe half-jogged the rest of the way up to him.  

            There was a small semi-circle of discarded boxes on the other side of the dumpster, connecting with the dumpster itself and the back alley wall to form a lopsided circle. The ground within had the sigil painted in thick blood, so thick that when Joe inhaled he could smell the rustiness of it on the air as well, enough to almost make him gag.

            “Guess the city kids improvised,” Joe said at last.

            “This isn’t funny,” Andy said.

            “Who’s laughing?”

            “Shit,” Pete said. “I guess I just assumed trees, but. Fuck. Do we destroy this too?”

            “Can’t be as hard to destroy as trees, right?” Patrick asked. He paused. “Did I jinx it?”

            “Probably,” Joe said. He made a face at the circle. Some intuition was warning him against stepping inside. He couldn’t reconcile this as reasonable, but he was getting used to listening to his intuition. “This seems. I don’t know. Off.”

            “Like maybe a demon got pissed about his last circle getting destroyed and made a trap for us?” Pete guessed.

            “Very much like that, yes,” Joe said. “Hmm. Is there any way to test this?”

            Patrick tossed something into the circle that clattered, spattering some of the sticky, coagulated blood. An old beer bottle, it looked like. Nothing happened, but just as Joe was going to say that that wasn’t the best test, Patrick lifted his hat off his head and ran his hands through his hair, dropping what must have been invisible hairs onto the sigil. Still nothing happened, and Patrick, without a word, stepped into the small circle.

            “Will you quit that?” Andy half-shouted. “That could have been dangerous!”

            “It isn’t,” Patrick said, and shrugged. “I feel fine. Let’s destroy this thing.”

            “I still don’t like this,” Joe said. “Last time you got launched.”

            “And clearly that won’t do much damage here,” Patrick said.

            “Yeah, that’s why I don’t like it. The charge-spell-what-fucking-ever has some kind of protection over it, clearly. So wouldn’t it have a different defense here?”

            “Only one way to find out,” Patrick said. Before Joe could stop him, he swung his knife down and drove it straight through the top of the cardboard box. At first, nothing happened, and even Patrick looked a little surprised. Then the earth beneath them began trembling.

            Undeterred, Patrick sliced towards him and down the center of the box, cutting straight through where the blood was splashed on it. The ground stop shaking for a second.

            Patrick glanced up at Joe, his eyes hard and challenging. Joe was about ready to apologize and admit that he was wrong when the earth shook again, not quite an earthquake, somehow, but a trembling not unlike the stage under amps. Joe was suddenly aware of how quickly the sky had become overcast, as Patrick stood there, too still, waiting for something to happen.

            “FUCKING MOVE!” Joe said, and whether due to the command in his voice or Patrick deciding to listen for once (more likely the first) Patrick jumped out of the circle. No sooner was he safely away when a pillar of lightning crackled in front of them, connecting the the center of the sigil and the sky. The lightning roared loud as fire and practically blinded Joe with its light.

            In the time it took Patrick to spin around, the column of lighting was still alight, leeching the alley of all its color. When it finally faded, leaving the inward-facing sides of the boxes ash-black. The street itself was smoldering. Joe moved to get a closer look and a small crackle came from the circle, making him step back again.

            “Well,” Patrick said. “Huh. You think that’s related to Pete’s lightning thing?”

            “That was not me!” Pete shouted.

            “Nobody said it was,” Joe said. “I think what he means is that you’re related to the demon. And you can also summon lightning. You know, all _I_ inherited from my dad was a high risk of heart disease.”

            “Is it just me,” Patrick asked, “Or does this feel less destroyed than the last one?”

            “It’s destroyed,” Pete said. “Any aura it had is gone. But this is a much more deliberate self defense than the last one. It’s a warning.”

            The two of them weren’t looking at each other as they spoke, like it was just a coincidence they were responding to something the other had said. They were so fucked, Joe thought.

            “It’s good that it’s destroyed,” Andy said. “But we should talk to Ryan before going for another one. I don’t think brute force is going to work out this… safely next time.”

            “Speaking of safety,” Joe said, turning to Patrick, and Patrick met him face on, scowling.

            “Give it a rest,” Patrick said. “Be careful, stop rushing into it, _I got it_.”

            “How about instead just quit being so self-destructive?” Joe asked. Patrick gave him the finger and pulled his hoodie a little tighter across his back.

            “I’m the only one getting shit done,” he said. He glanced up, and pulled another face. “Come on, let’s get back. It looks like it’s going to rain now that we’ve triggered the lightning.”

            “ _We_?” Joe repeated incredulously.

            “You think all this magic is fucking up the weather?” Andy asked. “Are we contributing to climate change?”

            “Yeah, I’m with Pa- I agree, we should go back,” Pete said. Joe winced as his voice caught on Patrick’s name, but he steeled himself for another uncomfortable ride back.

            “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go back.”

            Another terrible afternoon passed, followed by another shitty show. Joe felt stuck, like wheels spinning uselessly in the mud, unable to make things better. It was easy to see misery radiating off of Pete, so Joe sent a look in Andy’s direction that conveyed that they ought to stick with him for the night again. Andy stopped to say something to Patrick before joining them. With Andy in the bus and Patrick presumably still with the members of Cobra Starship, Joe realized that the girls had the other bus all to themselves.

            Pete was doing terrible with sleeping. Joe figured he hadn’t slept much the previous night, but that night was no better. Pete was present enough to cycle movies through the DVD player, though Joe wasn’t sure whether he was watching them or just trying to reassure his friends that he would be alright. They were all bad 80’s movies, starting with innocuous _Indiana Jones_ but soon after moving into the dangerous territory of John Hughes movies. Somewhere between _Temple of Doom_ and _Pretty in Pink,_ Joe’s eyes began drifting shut. Only when Gabe shook Joe’s shoulder and motioned towards the back of the bus did Joe realize he had fallen asleep through most of the rest of the movie. Also, the bus was moving. He had been rocked straight to sleep.

            “Go,” Gabe mouthed. “I’ll stay with him.”

            Gratefully, Joe crawled into his bunk. The next morning, he woke up too early once again.

            The tour was dragging its feet. Joe thought if they could get through the last four shows, just suffer through a few more days, then they could kill the stupid dragon, dispense of Pete’s dad, and take a few months to try and recover in silence. Just a few more days, he kept telling himself.

            It was a wet morning in Portland, though in all his years of touring Joe had yet to see a Portland morning that was anything else. He made to rouse Pete from bed, but Pete was still sitting on the couch, eyes half-glazed and turned towards the window rather than the TV.

            “Jesus,” Joe said. “Did you sleep at all?”

            Pete looked over at him and stretched slowly.

            “A little,” he said. “Um, I think. I only remember the opening credits of something. Why are you up early?”

            “We’ve got more training,” Joe said. “Come on. Cruciform practice.”

            “Is Vicky coming?” Pete asked.

            “Doubt it,” Joe said. “She hasn’t been responding to my texts, but we’ll see.”

            “You know it’s raining, right?” Pete said.

            “It could be raining when you have to fight the dragon,” Joe said. “C’mon. We’ve got to keep practicing.”

            Pete shrugged, which Joe took to mean acceptance. It was only drizzling, so it wasn’t hard to set up out behind the tour buses.

            Joe had never known Pete to be that great of a fighter, but he was getting decent. Joe didn’t know how well he’d do in a sword fight, but he was fast enough and knew how to hold the sword, at least. Yet again, Joe was struck by how heroic he looked. Hair dripping with rain water, eyes trained on the sandbag Joe held up, he actually looked quite formidable. After an hour or so of practice, Joe set down the bag and told Pete he could go.

            “Go shower before getting catering?” he asked.

            “Whatever you want, man,” Joe said. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got it.”

            “Really?” Pete said. He looked more frightened by the idea of being finished training than by the giant dragon he was going to have to fight. Maybe he was scared that Joe had nothing left to give him in terms of help. That was definitely what was worrying Joe.

            “Really,” Joe said. Then- “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

            “Made it this far, right?” he said. “Okay. Shit. I’m gonna try and get some sleep.”

            “Good luck with that,” Joe said. After Pete walked away, he heard a noise from behind him. Joe whirled around, thoughts of getting roasted alive prevalent in his thoughts, but it was only Patrick, the brim of his hat keeping the rain off of his glasses.

            “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice acidic. “I’m not getting any ideas.”

            He walked off in the opposite direction as Pete, and Joe wondered for a moment if he was doing anything to help them at all.

***

            Patrick made a point to exit the Cobra Starship bus as soon as the buses stopped at the next venue. It felt like he imagined a walk of shame would feel, but he didn’t have enough experience with one-night-stands to say for certain. He had been told multiple times in no uncertain terms that he was “more than welcome” to Gabe’s bunk, but he hadn’t wanted it. He didn’t know if it was an angsty urge or some form of masochism or just not wanting to let himself get too used to Cobra Starship. It was nice being with them instead of his own band, but he stayed on the couch. That felt properly transitory and was a reminder to himself to not get too comfortable. Also, there was more room on the bus couches than bunks, and it was easy enough for him to lay his head on Vicky’s lap while she sat out in the lounge, reading late into the night (or till very early in the morning, depending on who you asked).

            Though her offer was still standing, they both knew nothing would come of it. It was nice to be wanted the way she wanted him, in a purely physical way, but Patrick craved more than that. Sex wasn’t going to make him feel much better, and while Vicky was a fantastic friend, she was uninterested in romancing him. Their arrangement was less emotionally-charged than his and Pete’s. Neither had pissed off the other, and they continued on as they ever had. Vicky was easy to spend time with, she didn’t lecture him for drinking, and he felt like a whole person around her.

            Or course, now there was a cynical voice in the back of Patrick’s head that said that becoming friends with anyone was just asking to get his heart broken. He tried to tell the voice that that was way too pessimistic of a way to live his life, but the voice was insistent.

            Because he was spending so much time with her, he ended up seeing the notification through the early morning light, a text from Joe about practicing with the new sword. Pete would be there, and though Patrick preferred to ignore him while his ego healed, he still wanted to see this.

            Patrick sneaked out of the bus while everyone else was still sleeping. It took a while to find the place where they were practicing, but once he had, it was easy for him to get transfixed. Pete was kind of incredible with the sword, and it was hard to watch him, but he couldn’t stop.

            How long would it take to stop being in love? How was he supposed to stop feeling this ache in his chest while Pete was out trying to save lives? How was he supposed to look over at Pete playing bass next to him and not feel his heart throb? How was he supposed to live like this?

            Pete looked like a storybook knight, just the way a dragonslayer should. He looked the part and he was good at what he needed to do. Patrick was obsolete in this plan. He was unnecessary. And he felt unbearably lonely.

            Naturally, Joe caught sight of him after Pete left. Patrick walked away so he wouldn’t have to deal with him, but Joe ran up to him fairly quickly and pulled him by the arm. Patrick turned, and realized that this was his first interaction with just Joe since The Incident. (Was his whole life going to be divided up like this? Before and After he fucked things up with Pete? He had been using the dividing line of when he realized magic existed, but now would there be three parts? Would the golden days be the few fairy-tale years between the inception of Fall Out Boy and his ruining everything?)

            “What’s up?” Patrick asked, working on keeping a quiet, level voice.

            “Um,” Joe looked stunned by the question, like he hadn’t quite worked that out himself. “Ah, I was wondering… how you were doing?”

            Well, it was encouraging to see that he looked more uncomfortable than Patrick. Perhaps Patrick had done too good a job dissuading people from trying to be nice to him.

            “I’m… fine,” Patrick said. He wasn’t sure what the hell else he was supposed to say. “How are you?”

            “Great, yeah,” Joe said. Further proof that Patrick had fucked everything up was that this was the sort of stilted conversation he expected to have with second cousins at family reunions, not his guitarist, one of his best friends who he saw every day.

            “Pete looks like he’s getting pretty good at this,” Patrick said, desperate to add something to make it better. At this, finally, Joe nodded and looked like he might say something, anything of interest. It was almost worth the way Pete’s name burnt on Patrick’s tongue.

            “Yeah, the cruciform takes some getting used to, but it’ll be the most effective at doing the job, I think,” Joe said. “Obviously this dragon shit is all guesswork, but…”

            “Doesn’t hurt that it looks like a sword you’d find on the cover of some fantasy novel,” Patrick added.

            “No, it doesn’t,” Joe said. “If that doesn’t work… I don’t know. We need a backup plan, but there’s not enough time to figure out some kind of spell. Shame none of us does archery.”

            “Maybe someday I’ll learn a skill as useful as the bow and arrow,” Patrick said. He realized that his voice was a little too heavy for a joke. But it was too late to worry about it. “How’s Pete doing?”

            Patrick hadn’t meant to ask that out loud.

            Joe looked pretty shocked that he had said it as well, but he recovered quickly.

            “Um, you know,” he paused for a second, like he was thinking over it very intently before responding. “He’s Pete.”

            “Does that mean not very well?” Patrick asked.

            “I mean, you know,” Joe shrugged, “He’s not sleeping well, and he’s a little on edge, but he’s Pete. And he’s got a lot going on. You know, the breakup and all.”

            “Breakup?” Patrick asked. He wasn’t certain it counted as a breakup if they had never been together, nor did he think that was an issue big enough to bother Pete. He was so busy thinking of himself that it took an embarrassingly long time before he realized what Joe must have meant. “What break- oh! Ashlee broke up with him?”

            “You didn’t hear?” Joe asked. “Uh, yeah, they broke up a couple of days ago. So that’s been going on, along with the dragon and all.”

            Of course that had been going on, Patrick thought, fucking of course. He felt instantly guilty, so self-absorbed that he hadn’t realized that Pete had his own shit to deal with. He paused, swallowed.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

            “Hey man, you’re doing your own stuff,” Joe said. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I think he’s doing okay, just, ah. He’s Pete.”

            Patrick was still fairly certain Joe was talking around something. He couldn’t decide if Pete was more upset over the breakup but didn’t want Patrick involved, or he was upset over the Patrick thing, but either way, Patrick felt like he was failing, somehow.

            “Right, yeah,” Patrick said. “Well. I hope he feels. Better.”

            God, but he sounded pathetic.

            “Do you want me to leave you alone?” Joe asked. Patrick didn’t, actually. He didn’t want to be pitied, sure, but he didn’t want to be alone. But he shrugged.

            “It’s whatever,” Patrick said. Like a bad movie, the rain picked up as soon as Joe walked away, but Patrick was getting used to that.

            There was still work to do, research on dragons and demons and magic, but research had begun feeling a lot like trying to write an essay the hour before it was due. Patrick didn’t really see what good it would do anymore. And since he wasn’t up for research, and he wasn’t quite ready to slink back to the Cobra Starship bus, he decided to see if his bus was empty.

            Shockingly, it wasn’t. In all the inter-band drama, Patrick had almost forgotten about Sola and Atalia, but they were up, Carmilla in Sola’s arms and drinking something thick and red out of a sippy cup with drooping eyelids.

            “Hey,” Patrick said. The physical reminders of drinking the previous night and waking up still a little drunk were suddenly much more embarrassing. He tried very hard to not slur his words and forced himself to stand a little straighter. “How’s it going?”

            “Finally getting her to sleep,” Atalia said, gesturing to Sola and Carmilla. “She woke up when her dad stopped by. We figured she’d wanna say hi, but she didn’t wanna fall asleep again.”

            “Poor thing. She’s gonna grow up on a rockstar schedule.”

            “I think everybody hits a rockstar schedule by the time they’re thirteen or so,” Atalia said. She turned back down to the book on the table in front of her, but Sola kept glancing at Patrick with big, curious eyes.

            “What’s on your mind?” he asked her at last. Sola flushed as she always did.

            “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just…”

            “Just?”

            “Where have you been the past few days?”

            Patrick wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. He’d found the last people on tour who didn’t know how badly he’d fucked up.

            “Long story,” he said, embarrassed at how thick his voice sounded, like he was choked up. “But I’ve been with Cobra Starship.”

            “Okay,” Sola said. “We’re not bugging you or anything?”

            “Jesus, no,” Patrick said. “You’re fine. It’s just been a long week. Long fucking tour. Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t swear.”

            “Patrick,” Atalia said. “If you stopped swearing you’d lose half your vocabulary.”

            “I haven’t flipped off anyone who wasn’t in my band in months. Don’t make me lose my streak.” Patrick sat down next to them at the table and took Carmilla out of Sola’s arms. It was comforting to hold her, to rock her, warm and solid and sweet in his arms. It made him feel useful and almost human again while holding her. She wasn’t so much a baby anymore, but she still slept better when someone was rocking her. She was a tour baby, and she slept better when she was moving.

            “Have you seen Pete recently?” Sola asked. Patrick almost dropped the kid before realizing, she wasn’t asking because she knew anything, she just wanted to know. He shook his head, looking down at the surface of the table.

            “Oh,” she said. “Well I was just wondering how the, ah, how the dragon plan is going along.”

            Patrick looked up then, and finally let the gravity of the situation hit him. If they couldn’t make this work, she was going to be dead by the end of the week. For that matter, she might die even if they succeeded in saving the tour. She looked brave and stoic, but she was just a teenager. Just a kid.

            “Still the same plan,” Patrick said. “We’re gonna kill this thing, and whatever comes next-- well, Pete’s good at talking his way out of things. We’re not going to give you up without a fight. Either of you.”

            “If it’s me or everyone else,” Sola started, and Patrick shook his head, refusing to let her go on. He wasn’t ready for that, not ready for anything.

            “We’re not going to let that happen,” he said.

            “How can you be sure?” Atalia asked.

            “I’m not sure,” Patrick admitted. “But we’ve figured it out this long. I can’t promise we’ll keep you alive, but we’re going to fucking try.”

            “I just don’t want to say all my goodbyes and then pull the rug out from under everyone,” Sola said. She gave one weak attempt at a laugh, and Patrick shifted Carmilla into one arm so he could take her hand. He looked into her eyes, trying not to cry. He felt protective in a way he had never known before.

            “If he-who-must-not-be-named takes you, it’ll be over my dead body,” he said. “Now, come one, don’t look sad. Look on the bright side-- Voldemort will be out of our hair in a few days.”

            “And you mean that?” Atalia asked. Patrick felt fierce and purposeful as he nodded.

            “Absolutely.”

            After texting Andy to make sure he was alright with bringing Carmilla, Patrick took the three girls with him into the nearby town. He had the advantage of being very rarely recognized when he wasn’t out with Pete. He only went to Target, but the girls seemed happy to go with him, and he was glad to have the company. He only needed a few items, but he let the girls drag him up and down every single aisle in the store, looking at boring stuff like shampoo and cat treats with far more enthusiasm than he thought necessary. Then again, he thought as they stopped to smell every single candle in the store and then hold the milder scents up under Carmilla’s nose, he sort of remembered Anna this way, treating shopping more like an experience of its own rather than a means to an end.

            Anna and Chicago and Pete. Falling in love just seemed to leave a lot of open wounds and painful memories everywhere. No wonder Pete wrote such bitter lyrics.

            Patrick returned to the back room of his bus. He hadn’t been back there since the night he had thrown himself all over Pete. His idea was probably stupid, but as he dumped out the Target bags all over the bed, he figured he had already bought all the stupid stuff and might as well go through with it.

            Patrick listened to old music while he dumped things into a paper bag. He was pretty sure it was a “Happy 5th Birthday” bag, but it had Star Wars on it, and that was all he could ask for.

            He was about ready to suck it up and ask either Sola or Atalia to go deliver it because he was way too embarrassed to do it himself when his phone went off.

            The moment he had been dreading had finally arrived. Pete had texted him asking to talk. Patrick should have known better than to think he had been able to head him off. He grabbed the stupid bag off the bed. Something else to get over with.

            Pete was waiting just outside, and Patrick let out a huge breath when he saw him. It shouldn’t still hurt to see him, he thought, and yet. Looking at him made Patrick feel like he was inhaling razor blades.

            He didn’t know where this had come from, why it had come so suddenly. He knew realistically that it hadn’t been sudden. Some part of him had been in love, felt something closer than friendship with Pete since they had been trapped together in a burning hotel. But after he realized it all just felt so possible. Maybe that was where the pain had come from. It didn’t feel like a rejection, it felt like a breakup. A breakup of the worst fucking kind, because Pete wasn’t Anna, wasn’t Chicago. He was his best friend first, and Patrick didn’t know how to function without him.

            “Hey,” Pete said.

            “Hey,” Patrick said. “Joe told me about the breakup.”

            “He did?” Pete looked stunned. “Huh. That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

            Patrick’s heart thudded too hopefully, too fast for him to tell it to shut up.

            “Yeah?” he asked.

            “Yeah, I-- ugh, okay, this is going to sound so fucking weird, and you can punch me in the face if you want, but- what’s in the bag?”

            “Oh,” Patrick looked down at the bag. He was hoping to put off dealing with this for as long as possible, but there was no avoiding embarrassing himself, apparently. “This is stupid. But, Joe told me about Ashlee, and I know we haven’t been talking as much, but since I’m usually around when you go through break ups and I’m not this time. What I’m trying to say is... Ugh, fuck, it’s a fucking break up care package.”

            He shoved the bag into Pete’s arms. It was full of candy in disgusting flavors and pizza rolls, a stress ball (for good measure) and a Mel Brooks DVD collection. Pete rifled through the bag without setting it down, occasionally making noises of assent or disbelief.

            “Like I said, stupid,” Patrick said. “But I can also send instructions with Gabe on, like, what to use when and all, if he needs help.”

            Pete didn’t look at him. He was looking down into the bag, and then he looked up at Patrick through half-lidded eyes.

            “I think we should fuck,” he said.

            Patrick would have been less disoriented if the hand of God had reached down and thrown him across the parking lot.

            “You _what_?!” he asked.

            “I just mean- okay, hear me out,” Pete said. “If you’re- if you are into me, and I’m on the rebound, we could like. Just have sex, like you and Vicky were doing. No strings attached or… anything…” he started trailing off. Patrick was shaking, seeing brightness on the edges of his vision. He supposed this was what everyone meant when they talked about seeing red.

            “To clarify,” he said through gritted teeth. “You think we should fuck because your bed’s cold and because you feel sorry for me?”

            Pete looked terrified.

            “ _NO_ , that’s not what I meant at all!” he said.

            “Clarify it for me,” Patrick growled.

            “I just meant that it could be- could be mutually beneficial!”

            “Mutually. Beneficial.” Patrick repeated the words, toneless. “Tell me, is that offer to punch you still open?”

            “For fuck’s sake!” Pete screamed. “I haven’t changed my mind but at least I’m trying to do something to make it better!”

            “In what fucking universe would this make anything better?” Patrick demanded.

            “We have to live with each other for the rest of our lives, the rest of this band!” Pete said. “Don’t you want it to be tolerable? What we’re doing now? It’s not working. I’m trying to compromise!”

            “The rest of our lives and the rest of this band are not the same timeline,” Patrick said. “Not even close. You’re such a fucking- you know what? You’re right. This isn’t working.”

            He turned to leave. Pete immediately grabbed his arm, and Patrick jerked it away like he had been burnt.

            “WHAT?!”

            “Are you going to explain yourself, or just stomp away like a drama queen?” Pete asked.

            The hazy light encircling Patrick’s vision was now dominating it, buzzy and hot and furious.

            “Actually, I was going to go call Island,” he said. “I want to see how long my contract extends after this tour. And then, if I can’t talk my way out of another album with you, I’m gonna find a good lawyer. Go make it work with someone less difficult than me.”

            He wasn’t sure if Pete said anything back to him. The buzzing in his eyes moved to his ears, impossible to see or hear or feel anything but anger and pain. He wanted to tell himself that it wasn’t as bad as the last time, but in truth, he already knew it was worse.

            He had his phone out, waiting for his vision to clear before he called the record company. Leaving felt a hell of a lot like admitting defeat, but he couldn’t do this much more. He _was_ admitting defeat, and maybe one day he could come back.

            Unfortunately, his phone vibrated again before he could make any phone calls.

            Sigil charging, again, or so it seemed.

            Out in the parking lot, meeting up with the others, Patrick couldn’t disguise his discomfort. More than discomfort. He stood a good ten feet away from Pete, not looking at him if he could avoid it, still smoldering.

            “Didn’t we agree it was too dangerous to mess with this again?” Patrick asked. “Not that I’m ever opposed to trying to fuck up a demon, but I thought we had agreed to focus our efforts elsewhere.”

            “That was the plan,” Joe said. “But this isn’t a murder, just an attempted one.”

            “Attempted?” Patrick tried to sound interested. Tried to be interested. It was harder than he thought it would be. He didn’t give a shit about the band or Pete, but there was still Sola and Atalia to think about. He could care for their sakes.

            “And someone gave the Portland police a nice favor so we can go talk to the victims off the record,” Joe added. Patrick met his eyes by accident and saw that Joe’s calm voice did not match a very confused look on his face. So he had already felt whatever went down, though Pete probably hadn’t had time to tell him what happened. “And it’s weird.”

            “Weirder than the fact the victims are being held in the police station?” Andy asked. He seemed oblivious, which was a nice change of pace.

            “Actually, that’s the weirdness I was referring to,” Joe said. “The victims and the killers are the same people.”

            The ride to the police station wasn’t as bad as it could have been, mostly because Patrick grabbed the car he had taken to the store earlier and pointedly asked Andy to come with him. No one else. They made the trip in chilly silence, but it was better than the idea of being stuck in a car with Pete. Pete who felt more sorry for him than anyone else.

            Andy led them to the police station with no trouble, not asking Patrick what was wrong or trying to breach the silence once. It seemed like a quiet place for such a major metropolitan area, but it probably wasn’t the only one. The room where the dazed (or charmspoken) looking policeman led them looked unlike the interrogation rooms in old movies and Patrick’s imagination. More than anything, it looked like a conference room. A rundown version of the kind of space where they would go to have Serious Business Discussions about their next album. But there were three people sitting at the table already, handcuffed to their chairs, two boys and one girl.

            The three of them looked like the kinds of kids who were Fall Out Boy fans. Patrick felt guilty as soon as he had the thought, but it was true. They were teenagers, the boys skinny with long black hair and messy eyeliner, and the girl a little chubbier with poofy, teased hair. They were all glaring.

            Patrick sat down at the table, directly facing the boy with the lip piercing. He could hear Pete walking behind him (could recognize his steps) but ignored it and focused on the kids in front of him. He folded his hands on the table and focused on the one boy. He was the first person Patrick had encountered in far too long that looked him dead on, his eyes piercing.

            After dealing with everyone on the tour tiptoeing around him, it was refreshing to see someone so intense, so unafraid, and someone who clearly hated him so damn much.

            “Hey, kid,” Patrick said.

            “I doubt you’re much older than me,” the kid responded.

            “Yeah, well, I’m over twenty-one, you’re in high school, and you’re handcuffed, so I reserve the right to ‘hey kid’ you as much as I want. Unless you’ve got a name.”

            “Jareth.”

            “That’s a kick-ass name, Jareth.”

            “Thanks.” He didn’t smile but he looked marginally less angry. “You’re Patrick Stump.”

            “Do you know that from an AP Magazine poster, or because of some magic bullshit?”

            “Both.”

            “Shut up,” the girl next to Jareth said. She elbowed him in the arm and he pulled away from her.

            “What?” he said. “It’s all over. We’ve got nothing left to lose.”

            “Do you have any idea how boring you’re making it for me to be the good guy?” Patrick asked. “I mean, like, seriously. All of this cryptic ‘it’s over’ bullshit just so I’ll ask what’s over, and you’ll be vague, and I’ll ask more probing questions, and we repeat this bullshit until you finally give us some actual information. So for the sake of all of our sanity and the sake of my temper as well, because buddy, I have had a long fucking day, let’s just jump to it. The police said you were the attackers and the victims. What the hell does that mean?”

            The boy Patrick had been addressing smiled at him, a thin, angry smile. The girl continued to look murderous, her lips pressed pointedly together. But the third boy, less visually interesting than the other two, leaned forward onto the table with a sigh.

            “We worship the demon Azazel,” he said. Patrick was not entirely surprised, but he did feel a jolt of shock.

            “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned devil worship?” Patrick asked. All three of the kids glared at him.

            “We worship Azazel, as many do,” he said. “The three of us didn’t even know each other, but he favored us, told us where to meet and what we had to do.”

            “Stop talking,” the girl said through gritted teeth. “You’re going to ruin everything.”

            “I’m not, because Jareth’s right,” he said. “There’s nothing left to be done. His followers from all over the world were reached, and he asked us to come together to give him strength. He asked us personally to sacrifice ourselves to him for his power in exchange for a place at his side in the life to come.”

            “The afterlife?” Patrick asked. “Jesus, you talk like characters on a bad CW show.”

            “You mock him!” the girl shouted.

            “Mocked him in person too,” Patrick said. “Wasn’t all that scary, to tell you the truth.”

            “You were willing to kill yourself for this?” Joe asked. “Why? I mean, I understand you were told you would be rewarded in the afterlife, but still, that’s a big risk you’re taking.”

            “Better a king of hell than a slave of heaven,” Jareth said.

            “We would do anything for our Master,” the girl said.

            “He lied to us,” the other boy said. Patrick turned back to him, now truly surprised. Even Jareth looked angry at his companion, like he was saying too much, but the boy continued. “Each of us was told that the other two were to be killed by us. We were under the impression that there were to be two murders and we would walk away. Obviously everyone couldn’t do that.

            “Azazel is a demon of war. The spell would be strongest if the blood were taken unwillingly. We were supposed to all go down fighting. Some sigils were blessed by three, others by two, depending on if someone survived or not.

            “But I called for help and we were stopped. I would have fought them and killed them, but I’m glad it ended up this way. Azazel plans to reward us anyway, for doing our part, for shedding unwilling blood even if it didn’t end up taking a life. And we’re one group out of dozens.”

            “Dozens?” Joe asked. “I thought it was just a few cities.”

            “It follows this entire tour,” Jareth said. Patrick looked at him again, and Jareth was still staring up, unapologetic. “Two or three have died at every location. The blood is strong, and this spell will be stronger than any the world has ever seen before. That’s what he says.”

            “What does that mean for us?” Andy asked. “Has he mentioned us?”

            “Yes,” the girl said. “You’re the ones trying to save a world that’s already broken and dead. It’s useless. You’re fighting for something worthless.”

            “Funny, that argument doesn’t sound any better now than it did a few years ago,” Andy said coldly. “What does the charged spell mean?”

            “We got to see the dragon,” the other boy said. “Even without us, you have no hope of killing it.”

            “Doubtful,” Patrick said. “But thanks for the concern. Did you have anything to say to us other than that the dragon is big?”

            “I kind of hope you don’t die,” Jareth admitted. “I really liked From Under the Cork Tree. Infinity on High was a little pop-heavy, though.”

            “And I’m out,” Patrick said. He left the room and waited out by the car. The drizzling had mostly stopped, so he sat on the hood and waited for Andy to show up so the two of them could leave.

            The others took a few more minutes, and to Patrick’s dismay, Pete walked out first, made eye contact with him and then looked away. Patrick would have loved to scream or throw something at him, but he kept his mouth shut and looked straightforward.

            On the way back, Andy finally asked him if something was wrong with him and Pete, and Patrick laughed so hard he almost drove off the road.

***

            Andy didn’t want to press. Pete was miserable, that was easy to see, so he very graciously waited a whole day to ask him what was up this time.

            “What are you talking about?” Pete asked dully in response. The three of them, Pete, Joe, and Andy, were sitting in the green room at the venue. Since the room was just for their band, no one else was there to make noise and liven the place up a bit, and the silence was stifling. Joe and Andy were playing a game of pool on the table in the middle of the room, but neither of them was especially invested in it.

            “Somehow you and Patrick got worse,” Andy said. Pete flinched at Patrick’s name, giving Andy and Joe another reason to share a worried glance.

            “It’s nothing he’d want me to tell you,” Pete said.

            “Hoo boy, that sounds bad,” Joe said.

            “What did you do?” Andy asked.

            “What makes you assume _I_ did something wrong?” Pete asked.

            “Never said wrong, just asked what you did,” Andy said. “Because Patrick hasn’t really been on the bus for me to ask him myself, and I’m nervous.”

            Pete was sitting on the couch, but then he pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.

            “You’re going to yell at me,” he said.

            Andy really hoped he wasn’t. But he had reached a point where he couldn’t passively wait for things to get better anymore. Patrick had all but moved onto another bands bus, and the only time Andy saw him for more than five minutes at once was sound check or actual performances, which were declining in quality. Pete and Patrick stood still, didn’t talk to each other, and didn’t look at each other. Pete wasn’t eating, and Patrick was drinking, and whether or not this was any of his business, Andy felt like someone had to intervene before it got too dangerous.

            “Just tell us what happened so we can try to help you fix it,” Andy said at last.

            He was not encouraged by the way Pete wasn’t looking up.

            “I thought compromise would help,” he said. “Since Patrick was so upset. So I suggested that we try a, uh, friends with benefits type of relationship.”

            “Is that all?” Joe asked. The game had been abandoned, and he was leaning on his pool cue like a cane.

            “I kind of implied that I wanted it to be a rebound thing so he wouldn’t think I had changed my mind. Also it was a badly worded request.”

            “How badly?” Andy asked.

            “I said we should fuck because Ashlee and I broke up.”

            Andy and Joe made long suffering eye-contact again.

            “Pete,” Andy said. “Do you see that pool cue?”

            Pete nodded.

            “I want you to break it in half over your knee and shove the pointy end up your ass.”

            “I’m doing my best!” Pete shouted.

            “In what fucking universe is that the best you can do? How would that have helped anything? I’m so fucking lost as to how anything would get improved by that, Pete!”

            “I thought something would be better than nothing,” Pete said. He sounded far too close to tears, and another shared look with Andy sent Joe down on the couch next to him, one hand on his back.

            “This is too fucked up,” Joe said. “Maybe you should just tell him the truth.”

            “My initial reasons for not telling him still stand,” Pete said. “Besides,” he added, sounding absolutely desolate, “I don’t think I’d be able to fix all this now even if I did come clean. I’ve done too much damage.”

            “It’s not too late to fix things,” Andy said. “I’m sure he’d understand.”

            “Probably not,” Pete said. “He said he was going to...”

            Pete stopped mid sentence. That seemed like exceedingly bad news.

            “Going to what?” Joe asked. Pete took a deep breath, eyes closed.

            “Okay, well we might still have time to work this out, but he said he was going to,” his voice got lower and sped up, “quit the band.”

            There was one second of silence.

            “HE WHAT?!”

            Joe and Andy shouted in unison, and Pete cringed backwards. He held his hands up over his head. He looked miserable, but Andy was a little past caring.

            “We fought,” Pete admitted.

            “No shit, Sherlock,” Joe said. “This goes beyond fighting and beyond drama. This affects everyone-”

            “And it’s still our fucking business,” Pete said.

            “If it’s _your_ business, then TELL PATRICK,” Joe shouted.

            “Tell me what?”

            Andy turned to see Patrick in the door. He was swaying slightly, not enough to look drunk if you weren’t paying attention, but enough. He was looking at Joe, and though he sounded angry, there was no real conviction on his face.

            “Tell me what?” he repeated.

            “Ask Pete,” Joe said. Andy stared at him, barely able to believe he would drag things out like this. Patrick blinked at Joe. His eyes flashed to Pete and then back to Joe.

            “I’d rather not,” he said. “We’re going onstage soon, right?”

            “Yeah, in like, twenty minutes,” Joe said.

            “Super,” Patrick said. He grabbed a water bottle and sat down in a chair, not next to the couch, but not all the way across the room. He opened his phone, and Andy and Joe looked at each other again. They couldn’t say anything with him in the room, unless they did, and Andy didn’t want to start a band-wide fight right before they went onstage.

            After roughly five minutes of complete silence, Patrick dropped the water bottle and cleared his throat.

            “You guys want me to fuck off so you can keep talking about whatever you don’t want to tell me?” he asked.

            “It isn’t like that,” Andy said hurriedly. Patrick smiled without humor.

            “That sounds like a yes,” he said. “I’ll come back sometime.”

            As soon as Patrick left the room, Pete slammed his head against the wall.

            “I’ll break the pool cue in half for you,” Joe offered.

            The show felt even worse than what was starting to become normal, but Pete still got undressed and the kids still screamed. Andy could see everyone in his band from where he sat, and even Joe was stiff that night. Pete wore his hood especially low, and his ‘diamonds in the sky’ speech sounded more emo than usual. They made it through another night, which was a big accomplishment for them. Everything was falling apart around Andy, but as long as the fans still showed up, all wouldn’t be lost.

            When they finally finished Saturday and walked off stage for good, Andy had every intention of going back to Pete’s bus to argue with him, persuade him, or just be there for him through the night, when a girl grabbed his arm. Andy turned to see Victoria holding tight to his elbow and glaring down at him. She looked pissed, and though he knew he was a vampire with super strength and she was a human, she was scary.

            “Ahem, Andy, Joe, Pete, could I have a word?”

            Andy turned just enough to see both Pete and Joe looking a little frightened behind him. Patrick seemed to be busy at the moment with Ryland, who was gesticulating fervently. Probably in on whatever Victoria was doing, which was alarming.

            “Just you three,” Vicky said, and she pulled both of them off to a side room. The venues they were in were so big on this tour that Andy had no idea what all the doors were for, but this one appeared to lead to a closet filled with nothing but plastic tables folded in on themselves and stacked vertically. There was barely room for the four of them, but Vicky paid that no mind, flipping the light on and turning her glare back onto them immediately.

            “You guys are being dicks,” she said.

            “Are you here to yell at me too?” Pete asked.

            “Yeah, a little,” she said. She had her arms crossed over her chest, but it still looked somehow more offensive than defensive. “Look, I get your secret, I get why you’re keeping it, and I’ve been keeping it for you too, haven’t I? That’s pretty difficult to do when you’re around Patrick all the time, which any of you might have known if you weren’t the worst friends on the planet.”

            “What?” Andy said. He pointed to Joe and himself. “What did we do?”

            “Ugh,” Vicky groaned. “Look, I like boys. I do well with male friends. And I do not like to play the gender card. But holy shit, I wouldn’t have to explain this to girls.”

            They were all looking at her blankly, so she continued.

            “You both picked Pete in the breakup and I do not have the words to describe how shitty that is of you two specifically,” she said, focusing on Andy and Joe. “Pete has the excuse of being moody and heartbroken and also Patrick doesn’t want to be around you. But you two? What the hell!”

            “We are actively not on Pete’s side here,” Joe said. “Um, no offense.”

            “I’m not on my side,” Pete said. “Go on.”

            “Really?” Vicky asked. “So, spending all your time on his bus?”

            “It’s my bus too?” Joe said.

            “Andy?”

            “Patrick’s not on our bus either,” he said.

            “At night! He goes back to his bus every day! You might have noticed, but you didn’t! I am not supposed to be filling the best friend role here!”

            “He doesn’t want us around,” Andy said. “He’s made that pretty fucking clear.”

            “But you’re supposed to be there anyway!” Vicky said, raising her voice but still not shouting, possibly because the door might not have been that thick. “That’s how friendship works! He didn’t come to me crying either. We got to emotions after three bottles of top shelf whiskey and watching Return of the Jedi seven times. _Seven. Times_. He can’t even fucking watch Ghostbusters, not that any of you would know or care.”

            “What are you talking about?” Pete asked. He sounded almost offended. “That’s his breakup movie. Or his dead grandparent movie. Just general bad times.”

            Vicky’s eyes were flat and dark in the poorly lit closet.

            “Okay, oh most high best friend, knower of all things Patrick, how many times have you watched Ghostbusters with him?”

            “Too many times to count.”

            “What’s the main character’s name?”

            “Well, there are four ghostbusters, so-”

            “You fucking know Bill Murray is the main character.”

            “Venkman,” Pete said. “Why?”

            “Oh,” Joe said. “Oh, that’s awful.”

            “What?” Pete demanded.

            “What’s his full name?” Vicky asked.

            “Dr. Peter Venk-” Pete began, and froze.

            Vicky nodded. “Yeah, that was day one. I’m here not to ask that you fix things but that you just stop being such _dudes_.”

            “Does he miss us?” Andy asked.

            “Find out yourselves,” Vicky said. “And if he asked, I wasn’t here. Just take care of it somehow.”

            “Will he come back to our bus?” Andy asked.

            “I don’t know,” Vicky said. “But you should be there anyway.” She moved towards the door, but paused with her hand on the handle, and turned around.

            “Also, I’ve been getting your texts about the training, and I’ll come work on it tomorrow. If Patrick is busy somewhere else. I’ve still gotta try fighting with the suit on.”

            She then threw open the door and walked out, leaving the three of them standing in the closet.

            “I killed Ghostbusters,” Pete said.

            “You really think that’s the worst issue here?” Joe asked.

            “If you don’t, then you don’t know Patrick that well.”

            “I guess I’ll be staying on my bus tonight,” Andy said.

            “You don’t have to listen to her,” Joe said. “I mean, it might not be that bad.”

            But Andy felt like it probably was. He knew Patrick didn’t want his sympathy, but the idea of want versus need hadn’t really come to mind for him yet. He tried to think of how it looked from the outside, if you didn’t know that he was trying to convince Pete of something. He had to admit that spending all of his time with Pete and rarely speaking to Patrick looked… kind of bad.

            Not that Patrick came back to the tour bus that night either.

            If Andy had expected or hoped that Vicky would tell Patrick to come over that night, he was mistaken. Carmilla seemed to be happy to be back on the regular bus, and the girls liked the company of Andy throughout the late evening, but Patrick didn’t show up. Andy started to think that this was a pointless effort, that it was too late to make any kind of reparation that would maybe convince Patrick not to quit the whole band, but then the next morning he woke up to the smell of bus-coffee.

            Andy padded into the main room, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, to see Patrick hanging onto the counter and blinking down at the coffee maker.

            “Patrick?” he said.

            Patrick jumped and looked up at Andy. He nearly knocked over the coffee pot but managed to catch himself, one hand on his chest.

            “Christ, you scared me,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

            “I live here,” Andy said.

            “You’re never around,” Patrick said.

            “I didn’t think you were either,” Andy admitted. Patrick nodded, then jerked his head towards the counter. “There’s coffee.”

            “Did you burn it again?”

            “Doesn’t taste burnt when you give it a bit of a kick,” Patrick said. He held up a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream and shook it slightly. Andy frowned, but reminded himself he was supposed to be supportive.

            “Right, I’ll take your word for it,” Andy said. There was vanilla soymilk in the fridge, which also did a good job of masking the burnt undertone of coffee made by Patrick. “You’re up early.”

            “It’ll probably sound stupid, but even doing nights on the Cobra bus, mornings feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Patrick said with a shrug. “Plus, I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”

            “Seems like no one has,” Andy said. “At least the tour’s almost over.”

            “Yeah,” Patrick visibly relaxed, like all his muscles came loose at just the thought of the tour ending. “There’s definitely that. I never want to go on tour again.”

            “There are some upsides,” Andy said.

            “Name one.”

            “When you make a monstrous fuck up, you get to leave the city and not come back for a year.”

            Patrick laughed, just once, but it was nice. “Yeah. I guess there’s that.”

            They drank their subpar coffee together and talked. To Andy’s surprise, Patrick was easier to talk to than he had imagined. He was still Patrick, if a little quieter. It was also shockingly easy to avoid mentioning Pete at all, as was proven by how easily Patrick skirted the topic every time he even threatened to come up in conversation.

            “What are you doing today?” Andy asked eventually. Patrick seemed stunned by the question.

            “Ah, I didn’t have plans, why?”

            “I didn’t either. Thought Carmilla could use some playtime with her uncle.”

            Patrick grinned, and Andy hoped he didn’t look too outwardly self-satisfied in giving him a tactful distraction.

            “You’re pushing babysitting duties off on me?”

            “I’m pushing babysitting duties off on us,” Andy corrected. “We can watch Nightmare Before Christmas with her for the thousandth time.”

            Patrick’s face darkened and his muscles tensed at the mention of the movie. Jeez, maybe he was as bad as Vicky had said.

            “Or you can try and inundate her with X-Men. Not the live action movies,” Andy said, trying to be stern.

            “You’re afraid of showing her violence? You?”

            “No, I’m afraid of her having bad taste.”

            They played with Carmilla, Patrick endlessly excited about helping her with block towers and throwing her up in the air and catching her again. All the while, Andy watched Patrick, kept an eye on him to see how he was doing. And he seemed mostly fine.

            But still, after Andy put up Carmilla for her nap, Patrick had out a bottle of whiskey, and when Andy asked about it, smiled tightly.

            “You can’t babysit me all day,” Patrick said. “But thanks for trying.”

            “Okay,” Andy said. He wasn’t one to push. “But you know I’m around, right? If you need anything?”

            “Thanks,” Patrick said. “Really. But I’ve got it.”

            Andy let it drop. He left to check on Pete. None of them mentioned Patrick.

            The day slipped by. There was another awful show that night, and another one the night after and still not much they could do about it. Andy divided his days between Pete and Patrick, both of them stuck in their states of misery. In this way, they finally reached the last day of the tour.

At midnight, Andy was roused by the sound of Sola gasping for breath between sobs and Atalia trying to calm her down. When he woke up in the morning, things only grew more tense. Ryan clapped him on the shoulder and wished him good luck. There was an empty bottle next to a mostly-full one Patrick was nursing before ten in the morning. He left the bus to find Pete staring at himself in the mirror, wearing the skin tight gray suit. A superhero outfit. Pete looked himself up and down, and promptly ran into the bathroom and threw up.

            Andy did not ask if Pete was okay, because that answer was obvious, and Pete didn’t try to pretend he was. Instead, he drank the water Andy gave him, and tried to take deep breaths.

            “I don’t want to jump into the mouth of a dragon,” Pete said. “Am I a complete coward?”

            “No, you’re a sane human being,” Andy said. “And you don’t have to-”

            “I’m not gonna let someone die for me,” Pete said. “I just don’t want to do this.”

            Andy, not sure of what to say to that, just rubbed his back through the suit.

            When Andy went back to his bus for a minute to stop and have lunch since there was nothing vegan in catering, Patrick caught his arm almost immediately.

            “How is he?” he asked.

            “How is…?”  
            “Pete,” Patrick said. “How is he?”

            “He’s scared,” Andy admitted. “Really nervous. Do you want to talk to him?”

            “I don’t know,” Patrick said. “Maybe. How nervous?”

            “Vomiting actively,” Andy said. Patrick made a face. Andy hesitantly continued with “ So are we talking about it?”

            Patrick was still and silent for a long time. Long enough that if Andy were anyone else he probably would have left, but he waited. And then Patrick sighed.

            “There’s not much to talk about,” he said. “I just. I don’t know how I managed to fall for fucking Pete Wentz, or how I managed to delude myself into thinking he liked me back, but now I think I fucked up the band forever. And I’m mad about how he’s handling it, but I can’t really be mad at him for not feeling the same. That’s his choice, his life. Mostly I’m still just worried about him. And knowing him, he’s probably beating himself up about it.”

            “You have no idea,” Andy said quietly.

            “I want to make it better,” Patrick said. “But I can’t stop feeling whatever it is I’m feeling.”

            Andy wanted so badly to tell him. He had to tell him.

            “Patrick,” he said, “There’s something you should know.”

            Patrick looked up, curious at the sudden intensity in Andy’s voice. But before Andy could speak, Atalia burst onto the bus.

            “It’s here,” she said. “The dragon is here.”

            Andy felt himself go numb, then felt a flash of heat rush through him.

            “But I thought- I thought after the show,” he said, unable to articulate the whole thought.

            “Hurry!” she said. “Please, get Pete, we can see the fire from here and we have to do something!”

            Andy turned to Patrick. Patrick returned his look, and then they both ran out of the bus. Andy sprinted after him, taking a brief moment to look over into the mountains in the distance. As promised, there was a plume of fire shooting directly into the sky, a burning orange pillar against the blue of the horizon. It was way too far away, but it was also way too big and Patrick was already running, so Andy turned around and stumbled after him.

            Patrick made it onto the other bus first, with Andy right behind him. Pete and Joe were leaning over the table, heads bent over the sword. They looked up when Patrick and Andy burst in. Andy didn’t have to be fae to see the way Patrick reacted when looking at Pete, the fear and turmoil of emotion, but Patrick overcame it quickly.

            “It’s here,” Patrick said. Pete blanched, but nodded.

            “Okay,” he whispered. It sounded like his mouth was completely dry, barely able to to be heard. He grabbed the sword and turned to Patrick of all people. Andy held his breath while the two of them stared at each other for the first time in a week, way too intensely.

            “Get Vicky,” Pete said at last, and then walked out of the bus. Andy glanced at Patrick, whose eyes had closed.

            “I’ll catch up,” he said. “Go on ahead.”

            Andy nodded, and he ran after Pete.

            The three of them ended up walking, he, Pete, and Joe with Sola and Atalia right behind them, straight towards the fire. The stream of fire remained consistent, which seemed abnormal. Not that there was anything normal about dragons, but didn’t they have to breathe?

            They were a considerable distance from the venue when they saw it, at least a mile out. They were still too far away from the dragon to start fighting it, but they could see it.

            The kids in custody were right. The dragon was huge. It was hard to tell from this distance, but Andy would guess that it was at least twenty stories tall, the size of a small skyscraper. Too big. Far too big. Just looking at it made Andy feel like they had already lost.

            “Pete,” Joe said.

            “I’m gonna be fine,” Pete said, like he was trying to convince himself. “I’m going to be fine.”

            “I should just offer myself up to it,” Sola whispered. “Maybe he’ll leave everyone else alone if-”

            “Maybe you’ll be dead and we’ll still have to stop it from killing everyone,” Pete said harshly. “Nobody dies if we can avoid it. That’s how this works.”

            “Okay,” Sola whispered. “Should we keep going?”

            Andy looked around him. They were in an open, grassy plain, nearby the venue but still far enough away that he didn’t think the dragon could burn anyone there from that distance. It would be much harder to fight and a much farther fall if they followed the dragon up into the mountains. He shook his head quickly.

            “No, we need to bring it here,” he said. “And I think it will come. Your dad seems to like the dramatic. He’ll like the idea of a standoff, won’t he?”

            “Yeah, voyeur asshole that he is,” Pete laughed without humor. “Okay, okay. I’ve got this.”

            “You’ve got this,” Joe said fiercely. “I would not send you out there if I didn’t think you could do it.”  
            Pete gave Joe one gratified look and nodded again.

            “Do you think the others will get here in time?” Andy asked.

            “Probably not,” Pete said, and moved forward. The dragon lurched forward as well, sickly-gray white and like a huge deadly cloud drifting directly towards them. Andy gripped Pete’s arm as the dragon glided across the sky.

            “Pete, be careful,” he pleaded. Pete nodded. He stuck the sword blade-first into the ground so he could adjust his suit, bracing himself. But as they waited for the dragon to finish its approach, Andy heard engines just behind them.

            He turned to see what the noise was about just in time to see a veritable fleet of golf carts driving up behind them. Patrick jumped out of the passenger side of his, whiskey bottle still in hand. He stumbled as he walked, but he caught up to them nonetheless. He grabbed Pete by the shoulder and met his eyes, nodding at him.

            “Hey,” he said.

            “Hey,” Pete said. It was about as close as the two of them would get to apologies.

            “Fuck me, that thing’s huge,” Vicky yelled.

            “That’s what she said,” Brendon said.

            “You brought the whole tour?” Andy asked Patrick, glancing around at the crowd. Patrick shrugged.

            “I brought Vicky, and the rest of the tour brought themselves.”

            “It’s coming,” Joe said sharply. “If all of you like your pretty boy faces, I suggest you stay back.”

            The whole tour stayed right where they were, the group of them lined up like they were all going into battle. Pete, if anything, looked better now that he had a crowd behind him. Much more confident. Much more Pete Wentz. He straightened himself up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. Andy stood half-crouched, not sure what he intended on doing to help, but wanting to be ready for anything.

            He felt the wind from the dragon’s wings first, so intense it nearly blew him backwards as the dragon landed. It towered over them, all but blocking out the sun where it stood. It turned its great head to look down at them, with piercing golden eyes that looked just like Azazel’s, just like Pete’s.

            “Azazel’s spell,” Pete said.

            “Hell of a fucking charge,” Joe said. “Are we allowed to say his name now?”

            “I doubt it matters much,” Pete said.

            “You would be wise to be more careful,” the now too familiar voice of Azazel said from behind them. Andy whipped around to see Sola, eyes blankly golden, smiling up at them. “What’s your brave plan? Are you going to slay my dragon, Pete?”

            “That’s the plan,” Pete said.

            “Good luck,” he laughed.

            The dragon roared, and they turned again. It had its head turned skyward, but it swung down until it was crouched, head just yards in front of them. Any one of its teeth was the size of a person, Andy realized with a horror that made him nearly hysterical. The urge to laugh was almost overwhelming, but he swallowed it down, making no noise at all.

            “You ought to run,” Azazel said, and the dragon opened its mouth all the way, rearing back as though it were about to gag.

            Andy sprinted to the side, only looking back to see if everyone else did the same one he was far from the line of fire. The heat against his back was searing, the roaring louder than any pyrotechnics he’d ever known. Everyone seemed to have run one way or another, and Sola’s head was tossed back in laughter.

            It was hopeless. Even with its head near to the ground, the dragon’s mouth was a far off target and this whole plan was too risky, too stupid. Andy met Pete’s eyes and shook his head.

            “I can’t,” Pete said. “It’s too- I can’t jump that far.”

            He probably could, Andy thought. It was risky, deadly risky, especially if there was any sort of venom on the dragon’s teeth. But it was possible. He could make that jump.

            “I could make that jump,” a voice next to Andy murmured. At first, Andy thought it was his own thought, it was so indistinct. Quiet enough that if he were human, he wouldn’t have heard it. But he did hear it, and it wasn’t his thought.

            “I could make that jump,” the voice said again, firmer in its conviction. Andy felt the dread lurch through him a moment before it happened, but he felt too paralyzed to move, to stop it.

            Patrick ran past him, into the dividing line of scorched earth between the two groups of people. He pulled the sword out of the ground as he ran, holding it in one hand and the bottle of whiskey in the other. He sprinted the distance between them and the mouth of the dragon. At the last moment, he pushed off the hard, burnt ground, and launched himself into the dragon’s mouth.

            He fell forward towards the dragon’s throat, past where Andy could see him, and the dragon rose to its full height again, mouth firmly closed with Patrick inside it.

            “Holy fuck,” Ryan said.

            “He didn’t do that,” Joe said, still speaking softly and not shouting. No one was shouting yet, for some reason. Andy hadn’t made any noise at all. “Tell me he didn’t do that.”

            “Crazy motherfucker,” Gabe said. “ _Patrick_.”

            Andy looked to Pete, because still no one was screaming. Did they not understand? Did they understand more than he did? Was he dead already? Pete was making no movement no noise, just staring, white faced, up at the dragon’s head where it swayed slightly, high up in the sky.

            Andy’s phone started ringing, shattering the silence. He looked at it, and to his disbelief, the caller ID read: PATRICK.

            “It’s him,” Andy said, just loud enough that the others could hear him, and he answered.

            “You _MOTHERFUCKER!_ ” Andy shouted. His hands were shaking, smoke still wisping up from the ground next to him, and everyone was staring at him. “You absolute fucking cunt! Get your ass down here right fucking now!”

            “That is _significantly_ easier said than done,” Patrick’s voice came through the phone scratchy and staticky, but alive. One wave of relief coursed through Andy’s chest, but he was still shaking so hard he thought he might drop the phone.

            “What the fuck?” he said. “What the fuck? What the FUCK EVERLASTING do you think you’re DOING?!”

            “I was trying to slay a dragon,” Patrick said. “And then it started moving. Please stop yelling at me.”

            He was much more drunk than Andy thought. His Chicago accent was heavy and slurred, and Andy hadn’t realized how much of his semblance of normalcy was an act. He wanted to cry, but he was busy pacing and staring up at the dragon.

            “I don’t care, Jesus fuck, get down from there right now!”

            “Do you suggest I jump?”

            The bastard sounded like he was laughing, and Andy was going to have an aneurysm.

            “Why did you call?” Andy asked.

            “Because,” Patrick hiccupped, “I need a, um, backup plan. Because stabbing it through the roof of the mouth didn’t work.”

            Andy’s stomach dropped down into his feet, and he looked over his shoulder. Joe, who he knew could hear the conversation, made a matching face of horrified disbelief.

            “It didn’t work?” Andy repeated.

            “No,” Patrick said. “I got knocked around while it was moving up and I stabbed it and- fuck, I don’t even know if it felt it. Maybe I missed? I can try again.”

            “Don’t try while it’s up there!” Andy shouted. “Wait till it comes down, fuck, shit, wait till you can escape! Fuck, if you live through this I’m going to murder you myself!”

            “You are not giving me a lot of incentive to get back down there,” Patrick said, dryly, but still too drunk to take this seriously. “Gimme a sec, I think I can stab it again. The tongue’s- whoa- kind of moving, so maybe…”

            Andy looked up at the dragon, its head tilted just slightly back. Like it was gagging.

            “Patrick get out of the way!” His voice broke, screeching up an octave. “It’s about to breathe fire!”

            “What?” Patrick shouted. Andy could hear roaring on his end of the line. “Oh, oh _shit_ -”

            There was a shout. The roaring on the phone got deafening, and when Andy looked up, he saw the jet of white flames coming out of the dragon’s mouth. The call hung up. Andy hit the redial button without looking as the flames burned brightly against the clear blue sky.

            The phone fell out of his hand and onto the ground, and from the grass below, Andy could just make out a mechanical voice saying: “the number you have called is no longer in service.”

            And then Pete started screaming.

***

            Patrick had not expected the mouth of the dragon to be so slimy. He supposed it was stupid that he thought otherwise, but really, it breathed fire. He would have thought mucus to be counterintuitive to flames.

            He couldn’t reason out why he had run. One moment he saw Pete shaking his head, too afraid to jump. The underlined section of the poem flashed through his head ( _Do I dare disturb the universe?_ ) and he was running, grabbing the sword, and jumping.

            From the moment the jaws closed around him, he thought that it was rather like being in a damp cave. There was a soft orange glow emanating about the mouth (larger than the average living room, Patrick realized) that came from the back of the throat. If Patrick looked closely, he could see the edge of a small flame hanging like a uvula, a pilot light.

            It was like being on another planet. A very wet, dark other planet, and Patrick felt a lot more sober there. He had landed on the tongue of the beast almost immediately, falling through a gap in the dragon’s teeth when the whole head moved, and man, but that was not a roller coaster Patrick had signed up for. Still, when the tongue moved, he launched up with it, and stuck the cruciform sword firmly into the roof of the dragon’s mouth. A little blood rained down on him, but the dragon seemed unbothered. It was around then that he called Andy for help.

            Lucky he had, because Andy seemed to know before the dragon was about to breath fire. Sure enough, Patrick heard the rumbling building from beneath him as soon as Andy spoke, and it gave him just enough time to throw himself back between the dragon’s teeth. He felt the fire scorching him as he started to jump, and in pain he dropped the phone, but managed to keep hold of the sword.

            With one enormous tooth between him and the white-hot stream of fire, it was still too much heat for Patrick to bear. He forced himself to nestle down deeper into the hollow of the dragon’s cheek, into its squishy, slimy gums. The bright side to this was that whatever the dragon’s saliva was made of, it seemed to be impervious to fire. Though Patrick was sweltering in the heat, he felt no burning. He could just see the light of the fire behind his eyelids, pressed closed to prevent what damage he could. He held himself as still as he could, buried in squishy, wet flesh.

            Hiding in the gums of a dragon was one of the stranger things he had ever done, but dammit, it was working. When the roaring stopped, he sat up, peering out between two of the teeth into the main section of the dragon’s mouth, where its tongue lay. It was still lit up faintly orange, and there was no sign of his phone at all.

            “Well shit,” Patrick said out loud. He grabbed onto the thick base of the tooth and pulled himself to his feet, completely coated in dragon spit. It was an absurdly unpleasant feeling. In vain, he rubbed at his forearm, but this seemed to only smear the sliminess around a bit.

            Patrick pulled the hilt of the sword through the belt loop of his jeans and felt around in the soft gum tissue of the dragon’s mouth until he found the cool, hard glass neck of the whiskey bottle. He then pulled himself back into the mouth proper again, trying to tread lightly on the dragon’s tongue. He knew what noises and movements to watch out for now, but he still wanted to stave off another fire attack for as long as possible, and he didn’t imagine the dragon would take kindly to feeling something stomping around on its tongue.

            “Okay, shit shit shit,” Patrick said. He unscrewed the cap of the whiskey and took a thick gulp from it. The last thing he needed was more fire, but dumb courage, he thought, would probably do him good. He walked across the tongue for a moment, then was knocked off his feet again as the dragon moved violently. Its head must have been tilted back, because Patrick was sliding backwards, quickly approaching its throat. Panic rushed over him, and he dug the sword deep into the dragon’s tongue and held on. The dragon made a screech of pain that echoed all around Patrick and let in a flash of blinding sunlight, just enough of a glimpse for Patrick to see that they were _flying_.

            Fucking hell.

            Patrick clung to the sword, tensing all his muscles to stay on the tongue, stay in its mouth, and not get digested. What a way to die. At least the fire would be fast.

            After a few moments of ascension, something must have happened outside, because the dragon turned, and only Patrick’s grip on the sword held him in place as he swung around in the opposite direction, thrown by the force of the turn. The dragon descended again, so quickly that Patrick was weightless for a moment, holding the sword so he didn’t crash into the roof of the dragon’s mouth.

            The dragon landed with a crash, and Patrick managed to slam his head into the hilt of the sword as it did. Pain ran through his skull, but he had only a moment to notice it. The rumbling noise was coming from within the dragon again, and Patrick scrambled to his feet, yanked the sword out of its tongue, and threw himself back into its gums.

            The fire did not burn for as long this time, though, and it came with a pained, shrieking noise. When the noises stopped, Patrick looked up and saw, to his deep confusion, that there was a deep black gash in the middle of the dragon’s tongue, burnt and blackened. He glanced up at the roof of its mouth and saw a smaller black hole, similarly burnt, and he let out one disbelieving laugh.

            It was burning itself, but only where the saliva wasn’t coating its mouth. It was brilliant, but all Patrick could do was make its tongue very sore. His fingers reached out for the whiskey again and had just found the bottle when he was struck by the realization.

            He was an idiot. All he had to do was reach a little higher, and make the fire burn a little bit longer.

            Still sitting in the dragon’s gums, Patrick ripped the top off the whiskey. He took one more drink, for luck, and then he poured a shot or two onto the blade, smearing the alcohol all over the sword with his fingers. He dragged himself to his feet yet again and climbed back into the mouth, bottle in one hand and sword in the other.

            “Okay,” he said. “Hope you’re thirsty. Motherfuck.”

            Patrick bounced on the dragon’s tongue. The inside of its mouth was so large that even with the sword as long as it was he couldn’t scrape the top of its mouth standing still, but the tongue was shockingly pliable, and he managed to bounce a few feet off it. It wasn’t exactly a trampoline, but it was doing something. What he really needed, he thought, was for the dragon to move its tongue up as well.

            Patrick walked to the middle of the mouth again and jumped onto the deep wound he had made as hard as he could. The dragon made a deep, loud noise of protest, one that made its tongue raise up towards the roof of its mouth. Now or never, Patrick thought, and he threw the whiskey bottle into the air. He wasn’t normally the best aim, but it was more than life or death. It was everyone’s life or death, and he wasn’t going to miss.

            Patrick managed to drive the sword directly through the middle of the bottle and up into the dragon’s skull, deeper than he had before, all the way up to the hilt before he fell and dragged the sword back down with him.

            The dragon’s head began to tilt back, the rumbling coming from within, and Patrick knew what to do. He ran back towards the teeth, but he knew he was moving too slow. He felt the fire on his back, hotter than he’d ever felt before, and let out one choked cry as he fell the rest of the way out of the line of fire.

            Even as he looked up, stars of pain winking in his vision, Patrick knew he had done it. This fire didn’t shoot out in a straight line, but it consumed the mouth of the dragon with flames. The dragon was burning itself from the inside, and though the light from the fire burned Patrick’s eyes, he had to keep watching. He had to see this through.

            The roaring of the dragon breathing its fire stopped, but the flame itself crackled on, licking at the wound Patrick had made, and burning more deeply from the inside. The dragon gave one last low, horrible moan, and then there was nothing but the sound of the crackling fire, and no more light emanating from the back of its throat.

            Patrick could feel the fall as the dragon began to collapse. He didn’t know exactly how high up they were, but knew it was too high to be safe. He threw himself back down onto his back, as deeply pressed against the soft inside of the cheek as possible, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes.

            It was like falling in a dream. The hideous weightlessness pushing against him, the buildup to the crash, the waiting, and then finally the dragon’s head hitting the ground.

            Patrick felt the slam of its skull on the earth, but he was reasonably well cushioned. It hurt, all of him rattled from the impact, but after a moment, he realized that the dragon had gone still, and though it was pitch black, he was still very much alive.

            It felt too good to be true. He started to crawl, dragging himself forwards until he met a yielding part in the flesh, and he stuck his hand out of it. He felt fresh air on his skin and almost cried, but he wasn’t done yet. He had begun alone and had every intention to finish alone, to drag himself out of this dragon and make damn sure it was dead through and through. But before he could execute his plan, he felt another hand on his grasp his arm tightly and yanked him out into the sunlit world again.

            Slimy, smoldering, and aching, Patrick fell back onto his ass in the grass, blinking in the harshly bright sunlight.

            “Fuck,” he said, and rubbed spit out of his eyes. “Man, you would not believe the day I’ve been-”

            And then he was dragged to his feet, and Pete’s lips were on his. Patrick’s eyes were still open at first, open enough to see that this was Pete’s face glistening with tear tracks. Patrick stared in disbelief for a moment, but Pete’s mouth was on his mouth, and maybe he was dead or dreaming or being pitied. But for once he didn’t care and he leaned on, grabbing the back of Pete’s neck and holding him tight.

            It seemed like hours or maybe days passed like this, but eventually Pete pulled back and Patrick blinked at him, feeling less heroic and a bit brainless.

            “Um,” Patrick said. “Pete-- you don’t have to--”

            “I lied,” Pete said. He was still crying, Patrick realized, and he looked like almost as much of a wreck as Patrick felt, frazzled hair and snot dripping down onto his fancy fireproof suit. “I lied to you and I’m in love with you and you can’t ever do that again.”

            Patrick stared at Pete. There were other people around, he was certain he remembered other people, but he had developed a strange sort of tunnel vision with Pete here in front of him.

            “You can’t lie,” he said.

            “You just said ‘yes or no,’” Pete said. He hiccupped. Patrick laughed, and shook his head.

            “But you’re not…”

            “I absolutely am.”

            Patrick didn’t want to let himself believe it, not if it was going to go away, but he knew it was true, would know it even if Pete wasn’t a fae. Patrick laughed again, shaking his head.

            “Un-fucking-believable,” he said. “You know, deception is no way to base a relationship.”

            “Relationship?” Pete asked. He was still crying actively, and Patrick wiped some of the tears off the bottom of Pete’s cheek with a dragon saliva coated thumb.

            “I just slayed a dragon for you,” Patrick said. “I think that makes me pretty good boyfriend material.”

            It was all he had to say. Pete threw himself onto Patrick, kissing all up and down his face, getting covered in dragon spit just as much as Patrick was. Patrick could have stood there forever, lost in the bliss of the moment, but he was rudely interrupted by the sound of someone clapping. He turned to see Gabe as the culprit, smirking at the two of them.

            “I mean, finally, am I right?” Gabe asked.

            Patrick rubbed his temples and finally addressed the rest of the tour staring at him.

            “Uh, hey,” he said. He glanced at the enormous corpse behind him, and laughed. “So, dragons. Am I right?”

            Andy and Joe were standing the closest to the two of them, and Patrick was instantly overwhelmed by guilt when he looked at Andy. He had probably scared him to death. He couldn’t quite decipher either of their facial expressions yet.

            “I should probably start by apologizing,” Patrick said. Joe punched him in the face, too fast for Patrick to even try and duck, and as hard as he thought he could have punched without breaking something. Patrick staggered back and held his palm up to his nose. It wasn’t bleeding. He looked up at Joe, still blank faced.

            “What was that for?” he asked.

            “Andy’s a pacifist when he could avoid it, so that was for him,” Joe said. “Also, because you’re an asshole who’s never going to do that again, right?”

            “How many dragons do you expect us to face?” Patrick asked. “Do I get a thanks?”

            “Fucking dick,” Joe said, and he and Andy enveloped Patrick in a hug as well, one that he sank into, legs still unsteady from the fall. Pete was pressed close to him as the four of them all tangled together. It felt more intimate than just hugging Pete.

            “You know,” Ryan said, breaking the moment in half. The four of them pulled apart to look at him. “That could arguable count as a fall.”

            “You mean that?” Pete asked. Ryan shrugged.

            “The future is so weird, dude.”

            “What does that mean?” Patrick asked, turning back to Pete. Pete who still had his fingers linked with Patrick’s. “Do- do all of you know what the fuck that means? Did all of you know this was going on? Because I swear to fuck, if you did-”

            “I just came to see the dragon,” Mark Hoppus said loudly and unnecessarily.

            “I feel like we need to have conversations about secrets kept between bands,” Patrick said.

            “Later,” Pete said, curling into him again. His hands traveled from Patrick’s hair down to gripping his neck down to his back, where Patrick screamed and ripped back.

            “Holy shit,” Pete said. “Are you-?”

            “Hospital,” Patrick said through gritted teeth. “How about we talk on the way to the hospital?”

            Pete nodded mutely, but still did not let go of Patrick’s hand as the two of them walked into one of the golf carts parked nearby. Panic at the Disco could walk back, Patrick thought. If they’d been keeping secrets from him, they probably deserved it.

            As it turned out, Patrick didn’t need to go all the way to a hospital. Someone had the presence of mind to call Ferrum while they were all driving back to the site of the tour. Someone else, (Patrick strongly suspected it was KTC, because no one in his band was thinking that far ahead) had already cleared a room within the venue where Ferrum had set up a makeshift medical station. This consisted mostly of a conference table covered in the same sort of paper lining Patrick was used to seeing at doctor’s offices. Ferrum nodded and smiled at him as he walked in, looking somewhat self-satisfied.

            “Gotten yourself into trouble again, Mr. Stump?”

            “Bit of a burn,” Patrick admitted. “I climbed into the mouth of a dragon.”

            Ferrum raised her eyebrows, but then laughed a little. “Oh, I do love rockstars,” she said. “You’re so much fun. Tell me, I don’t see any burns, so where does it hurt?”

            Patrick turned to show her his back. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing from his system, he was beginning to feel the deep, hot throb all along the skin of his back and arms from the first breath of fire. Not to mention the fact that he was beginning to realize how badly bruised he was. Ferrum had him climb up on top of the table and began her examination.

            Patrick wasn’t in too bad of shape. As Dr. Ferrum gently informed him, the pain was a good sign, a sign that the burns were not actually too severe. They were about as painful as they could be,nd any worse would have caused permanent nerve damage, but given the circumstances, he was doing excellent. Ferrum cut off the singed-black Clandestine hoodie and the shirt Patrick was wearing beneath it and began to wash and dress the wound while Patrick and his band talked.

            The whole story finally came out. Of a prophecy predicting Patrick’s death (“And possibly the end of the _world_ , Pete, am I really the priority here?!”) and Pete keeping his mouth shut. Of trying to prolong the inevitable for as long as possible, and of Pete trying to fight Patrick off to protect him. Patrick had a lot of choice words to say about this decision, most of them expletives.

            Joe and Andy were able to explain knowing and not being able to reveal Pete’s secret in good conscience. Patrick took it all in fairly well. He was unhappy to say the least, but he couldn’t find it in himself to stay mad at them. After all, it didn’t matter anymore. All while Dr. Ferrum was applying a cool, soothing balm to his back, Pete was tracing circles on Patrick’s palm with the blunt edges of his fingernails, and Patrick couldn’t feel upset at the same time.

            After getting through an explanation of the week from hell, with only a very brief interlude of “So you guys were just gonna let me believe I was the asshole forever?” Patrick got to describe the incident with the dragon.

            “What were you thinking?” Pete asked. “I mean, I think I reserve the right to be the one who pulls all the stupid shit in this band. Why did you- why would you-?”

            “You didn’t want to,” Patrick said, hoping fervently that he wasn’t blushing or something equally embarrassing. “I could see that you didn’t want to. And also…”

            Pete all but had to drag the answer out of him. Even when his eyes weren’t glowing, they could make Patrick do whatever he wanted, just by looking at him all pleadingly. It was a dirty trick.

            “I didn’t want to be the breakable human,” he said. “I wanted to be the superhero.”

            “You couldn’t have been the superhero with a fireproof suit?” Joe asked.

            “That one’s on Pete,” Patrick said.

            He described being in the mouth of the dragon, and after being reprimanded by everyone in the room for jumping into the mouth of a dragon while drunk, explained how the whiskey saved his and everyone’s life. Even Dr. Ferrum, unable to not listen in on their conversation, sounded impressed by the ingenuity.

            “So what did I miss on the ground?” he asked at last.

            “Lots of screaming,” Joe said. “Lots and lots of screaming and crying. Conveniently for everyone’s sanity, we’re still pack bonded, so I was eventually able to tell them that no, you weren’t dead yet.”

            “That’s good,” Patrick said. “Also, Andy, sorry again-”

            “I will forgive you someday,” Andy said, his voice long suffering.

            “Pete?” Patrick asked. He still felt strangely shy every time he spoke to Pete, and Pete nodded.

            “I was a bit of a wreck,” he said.

            “A bit!” Joe scoffed. “You were biblically mourning, hair-tearing-out, tantrum on the ground-”

            “I thought it was my fault you were dead,” Pete said pointedly to Patrick. “Can you even imagine?”

            “Sorry,” Patrick said. “But I mean… I did save the day.”

            “And you’re all done,” Dr. Ferrum said. “If I were you I would change out of the clothes you wore in the mouth of the dragon, but you are good to go.”

            “Thanks,” Patrick said. “I would hug you but. You know.”

            “I know,” she agreed.

            The four of them walked back to the buses, and Patrick finally stopped and remembered that the dragon wasn’t the whole problem.

            “What about Sola and Atalia?” he asked. “Are they alright?”

            “Once the dragon fell Sola started acting like herself again,” Joe said. “But we should go talk to them and to Azazel,” he added.

            “How do you figure?” Patrick asked.

            “Let’s see if we’ve finished this.”

            The group of them were fast becoming pros at calling demons. It took less than five minutes to set up a circle around a mirror, get Ryan’s necklace back onto Sola at her request, and to call Azazel. What took longer than usual was the response time

            After nearly thirty seconds of staring into a blank mirror, Patrick cleared his throat.

            “Do you suppose we’re on hold?” he asked. No one answered, but a moment after he spoke, two heavy lidded golden eyes opened in the mirror.

            Sola held tight to the necklace she was wearing, and Patrick looked down at the mirror intently. Nothing seemed to happen, and after a very long time a sigh filled the room.

            “I suppose you want congratulations?” he asked. “That necklace is unnecessary, by the way.”

            “Congratulations would be nice,” Pete said. “But I’m more looking for reassurance that this is it.”

            “This is what?” Azazel sounded mocking, scornful as ever, but to Patrick the voice also sounded strangely weary. “If you want a promise that this is the last you’ll hear of me, I will tell you no such thing. But I can say that you pick your companions well, if strangely. Your little human lover saved the day. The dragon is well and truly dead, though I might suggest taking care of that corpse before someone finds it and announces it to the world. Or reanimates it, if it truly falls into the wrong hands. And because the four of you put on quite a show, and because I’m very, very tired, we’ll call it even with the little girl too. A sign of my benevolence.”

            “And that’s it?” Patrick asked. “No- no swearing your revenge on us, or trying to take Sola anyway- that’s just it?”

            “That’s just it,” Azazel repeated. “For now. I don’t especially care about the outcome, but I would like to be entertained. Go enjoy your happy ending, for now. Nothing ever really ends happily, but the temporary peace will be nice.”

            Sola had tears sparkling in her eyes. Patrick exchanged an eager look with his band, because never mind all of the ominous nonsense, they had _done it_.

            “Oh, but boys,” Azazel said, his voice softer and weaker than ever, as though he were already fading away. “I should warn you about mirrors. I think you’ve heard to beware of them before, but it’s not me that you should really be afraid of.”

            “Cheerful guy,” Joe said. “Any-fucking-way.”

            Joe scooped the two teenagers into a way too-tight hug. The rest of the band piled on top of them as well, dazed but happy.

            It seemed as though the day would never end, but for the first time in a while, that was a good thing. Fall Out Boy was late to soundcheck, and it took a lot longer than usual because Pete wouldn’t stop looking for excuses to touch Patrick: kissing his neck and leaning on his shoulder and letting his bass hang somewhere down by his waist so he could steal Patrick’s hat and play with his hair. Everytime Pete touched him Patrick felt his heart whir like a bad engine. It all felt so surreal, like a dream he could wake up from at any moment, but it kept happening. Pete just kept catching his eye and grinning, looking down at the floor and blushing pink all the way down under his shirt collar.

            (Patrick had never been inclined to use the word “adorable” to describe Pete before, and yet.)

            Rather than get a free second to themselves after soundcheck, Cobra Starship (reunited with Gabe, at long last) stuffed ninety percent of the tour, plus Panic at the Disco, Sola, and Atalia onto their bus for an end of tour toast that quickly devolved into a small party surrounding the bus. Backstage, they were trapped by Brendon gushing to them about how awesome this was, and when could they tour together again, and how incredible Patrick was for slaying a dragon. When they finally got Ryan to lure him out of the room, Sola and Atalia came by.

            “Hey,” Atalia said. “We wanted to stop by one more time and say our goodbyes.”

            “You’re leaving?” Patrick asked. “You don’t want to stay for the show?” He felt almost disappointed. It wasn’t as though they could take them with them forever, but he had grown used to their company, and he finally realized that he was going to miss them.

            “Yeah,” Sola said sheepishly. “It’s been real, guys, but to tell you the truth-”

            “-we’re kind of sick of Fall Out Boy,” Atalia finished. The two of them giggled.

            “Is it totally presumptuous to ask if we can keep in touch?” Sola asked.

            “Definitely not,” Andy said. “And, uh, let me know if you’re ever in Wisconsin. I could use babysitters I trust as much as you.”

            “We’ll apply to college in Milwaukee,” Atalia said in a deadpan voice. “But for now- high school. Maybe when you tour for a new album.”

            Pete handed them a shiny silver credit card and told them to get first class seats home, and then they were gone.

            “Not often that someone meets us and ends up better off,” Pete mused.

            “Speak for yourself,” Patrick said. “Have you met Panic at the Disco?”

            The show passed in a blur. Pete couldn’t exactly grope him onstage in front of the fans, but he was back to being his usual touchy-feely self. And finally the tour ended.

            Though they were loathe to take Azazel’s advice, Joe did grudgingly admit that burning the dragon wasn’t a bad idea. It was a difficult to execute one, but it wasn’t bad. The idea of someone with powers like Mikey’s or a too-talented spellcaster doing something with the dragon corpse was really not something they wanted to deal with. Patrick doubted that any individual parts of the dragon had interesting magical abilities, since it was just a spell, but it was a huge vessel, and he was not interested in fighting it twice.

            The bands all made the trek back out to the dragon, dozens of canisters of gasoline with them. The dragon was, as Patrick could have told anyone, pretty fireproof on the outside, but they were friends with the sort of people who were undeterred by mere labels like “fireproof.” Mark Hoppus especially seemed to take great joy in climbing up unto the enormous back of the dragon and shaking gasoline out all over it.

            Getting the dragon to catch fire was difficult, but no one would stop trying, and eventually the blaze from the accelerants was so intense that the dragon must have caught somewhere. Ryan told them that he didn't see any wildfires catching from them, but they kept water and fire extinguishers on hand just in case. It made a sort of monstrous bonfire for the bands to all sit around.

            “Should have brought marshmallows,” Bill said dryly. “Man. That is. That's a fucking dragon.”

            “Yeah, not for long,” Joe said. “It's mostly just a hell of a fire.”

            “You know we can't actually cremate this thing, right?” Mike said. “I'm pretty sure the fire would have to be, like, 4000 degrees to burn it to ashes.”

            “Eh, it's magic,” Ryan said. “Give it time.”

* * *

 

(a brief interlude. The chapter can end here, but some of you requested I take my intimate scenes a little farther, and thought it would be good closure to the romance plot line. So be warned, sex scene up ahead, and the second ending, haha)

* * *

 

            Though Patrick felt wildly content in the warmth of the fire, with Pete's hand in his, he was still buzzing with energy. And he was getting a little bit antsy, unable to escape the crowd and constantly being congratulated. All eyes on him hadn't been bad this day. For once, everyone was admiring and happy for him. But really, after this endless day, he just wanted to be alone with Pete.

            “You wanna get out of here?” he whispered, his lips brushing against Pete's ear. Pete jolted like he'd been electrified, then turned to Patrick with a huge, dopey grin on his face.

            “Am I that cheap of a date? You don't even wanna take me out to dinner first?”

            “Uh, I slayed a dragon for you. You're the most expensive date I've ever had in my life, but if you'd rather wait-”

            “I really, really wouldn't.”

            The final show was in California and only a few hours’ drive from Pete's house, but they simply weren't willing to wait that long. They drove to a Hilton not five miles down the road, hoping not to run into any fans, given the lateness of the hour. Patrick was riding a wave of nervous energy. Pete rested his hand on Patrick's things while he drove, and Patrick felt something like soda bubbles racing up his veins and into his heart, emanating from where Pete was touching him.

            Pete slid his credit card across the desk and asked the bored girl working that night to put them down under “Paul McCartney and John Lennon,” and Patrick rolled his eyes.

            “I'm only agreeing to this if I get to be Paul,” Patrick said while they walked down the hall. The hotel was empty as a ghost town that late at night, and the weight of the intimacy was overwhelming.

            “While you are a pretty boy with a good voice, I'm so not John Lennon,” Pete said.

            “You're Ringo.”

            “Ouch, ice cold.”

            The buzzing in Patrick's veins was almost too loud to stand by the time the entered the hotel room. What he had earlier mistake for nervousness he now recognized as another feeling entirely.

            Patrick pushed Pete up against the door to speed the process of closing it. He grabbed Pete by his hair and pressed himself close to him, not wanting to shut his eyes and miss the sight of Pete, but unable to do otherwise. Pete moaned into his mouth and pushed his knee up between Patrick's thighs. Patrick groaned, ground down against Pete and felt nothing but need and want. The only thing in the world was Pete, skinny and writhing like electricity beneath him.

            It was hard for Pete to talk as Patrick was making sure his lips stayed otherwise occupied, but he eventually managed an “Mmph- bed, we should- bed.”

            Patrick obligingly pulled on Pete's collar and tugged him across the room. They collapsed on the mattress with Patrick on his back, looking up at Pete. The view was suddenly spectacular, all bright teeth and tangled hair, and then Pete leaned down and pressed his lips to Patrick's collar. He kissed and bit up Patrick's neck until his toes curled and his back arched upwards, like every inch of his body knew that the only goal was to get ever closer to Pete.

            “We should,” Pete said between kisses, “we should, ah- oh! probably talk about feelings? And shit?”

            Patrick let his head thunk down onto the pillow.

            “Right,” he said, trying to hide massive disappointment. “Feelings. I mean, I guess we haven't worked out the finer points of this thing, but-”

            “Oh, fuck no, not right now!” Pete said. He was already leaning close again, pleading, his fingers clenched in Patrick's shirt. “I just meant _sometime._ ”

            “Thank fuck,” Patrick said, and gripping Pete's shoulders, he pulled him down and rolled back on top of him. He had pulled Pete's jeans not even to his knees yet when Pete interrupted again.

            “Wait, wait, wait, how do you wanna do this?”

            “Huh?” Patrick's brain felt clouded, like the constant stopping was confusing his head.

            “Like, which way do you prefer to do this,” Pete said. The pink tinge to his skin definitely went down past his waistband, so that was something interesting that kept drawing Patrick's attention from the conversation. It took him a moment to process.

            “Oh,” Patrick said. “Er…”

            “You've done this before, right?”

            “No, Chicago and I sat quietly and prayed. Holy shit, dude, I'm going limp here.”

            “I can absolutely fix that,” Pete said, eyes raking down Patrick's chest. “But you didn't say-”

            “Top, I guess,” Patrick said. “Unless you prefer-”

            “I want you to fuck me so badly.”

            And Pete was right: it didn't take much effort to get Patrick to right back where he was. It took seconds for Pete to rip his own clothes off, and not much longer to tug Patrick's shirt off as well. Patrick pulled back at this, drawing his arms reflexively to his chest.

            “What?” Pete asked.

            And they had agreed, feelings and shit could come later. There was no sexy way to say “well, you see, I have a stomach and that's kind of nerve wracking,” or“the last time you saw me shirtless, you pushed me off the bed and broke my heart,” so Patrick wasn't inclined to say anything at all. Pete seemed to understand without anything being said. He pushed himself up on his elbows and kissed Patrick in the center of his chest, once.

            “You're gorgeous,” he said. “And you're gonna kill me if you stop.”

            It was all the encouragement Patrick needed. The moment was perfect, and then he realized the problem. He finally had Pete undressed, lying underneath him, and he stopped, closed his eyes, and sighed.

            “What?” Pete whined. His hips jerked upwards, spasmodic.

            “There's no lube,” Patrick said. Pete looked up at him.

            “You've got to be fucking kidding me.”

            “I really wish,” Patrick said.

            “We could do this Brokeback Mountain style?” Pete pleaded. “Spit into your hand and let's go for it.”

            “Uh, it's your ass, but I would _highly_ recommend you reconsider.”

            Pete deflated. “Should I put my clothes back on?”

            “Absolutely not,” Patrick growled. He pinned Pete to the bed, hands on his shoulders, and leaned down. He started kissing at his stomach and let his mouth trail down, pausing at the very bottom the tattoo on Pete’s pelvis. Pete bucked up, a hushed stream of whispered pleas pouring out of his mouth, too fast and soft to be at all intelligible. Patrick brushed Pete’s dick with his lips and Pete whined, hands twisted in the sheets.

            “Should I slow down?” Patrick asked, teasing.

            “Mother _fucker_ ,” Pete gasped. “Would you just?!”

            Patrick moved his hands down to Pete’s thighs and wrapped his lips around Pete’s dick. Pete made a harsh noise, his head thrown back against the bed. As Patrick moved slowly, just enough to keep Pete on edge, the unintelligible stream of swears and pleas turned entirely into Patrick’s name, repeated over and over again.

            Patrick had just barely begun to get into a rhythm when Pete screamed and came. Patrick pulled back, half shocked at how quick the whole thing was, and half at the noise Pete made.

            “I’m not that good,” he said. His throat felt sticky, having swallowed more out of surprise than courtesy.

            Pete nodded weakly, looking boneless against the hotel pillow.

            Patrick started to pull back, but Pete shook his head and brough Patrick closer to him, pulling him by the hair. The two of them lay chest to chest for a moment, breathing in tandem with one another. Pete kissed Patrick, his lips softer now, less frantic than anything they’d been before.

            “I love you,” he whispered, barely audible. Patrick was on the edge of saying something teasing in response, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

            “I love you too,” he said. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing in the smell of hotel laundry and sweat and _Pete_.

            They lay there for a moment, and then Pete pecked him on the cheek and moved further down the bed, his hand tracing Patrick’s stomach as he went.

            “Your turn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a ride! So first, thanks to Mani, my wondrous beta without whom you would get to read a very sloppy story that makes no sense at all. Second, to all of you who must have post notifications on, because wow you jump on these updates fast! It does wonders for my ego! Lastly, to all of you readers-- you make me so happy and I'm so glad to have you.
> 
> Um, yeah. I have loads to say but I'm so behind on homework that I HAVE to run and do that, but I may add more later. For now, thank you so much for reading, and stay tuned for more!
> 
> Title by Fall Out Boy


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